How long to tile this?

[Goldspoon]

I am not a tiler (plumbing more my thing) but have tiled two previous bathrooms. This work shown in the pic has taken me two days and it seems a small amount for two days of work (16 hours in total...) even though I have felt quite whacked!. Is tiling one of those things that you get faster at? I have to admit I find it hard at this stage to see how I can save much time (I use an electric tile cutter). I am a perfectionist but it seems to me that tiling demands this as otherwise things look awful.

This room requires approx. 12 square metres doing. The person I am doing it for is happy with what I am charging but he has showed me a bill from the tiler who did the same room last time (two years ago) and this chap charged £15 a metre (so £330). At that rate I would have earned about £120 for the last two days. To further surprise me I'm told the last tiler did the whole bathroom in a day and another one the next day! This room will take me a good 4-5 days. I appreciate getting faster but that much faster seems impossible. What am I doing wrong?

 

[gcol]

So what have you exactly done in 2 days - just the tiling or are you fitting out the whole bathroom?

 

[Goldspoon]

The two days was pure tiling work. I am fitting out the rest of the bathroom (is a complete rennovation) but the tiling shown took two working days.

 

[gcol]

Oh. Well at times tiling can be deceptive in the amount of time it takes depending on how fiddly it is. Apart from getting the tiles to line up around that ledge, that looks pretty straight forward. To be honest, I would not put that at much more than about 3 hours.
You will get faster. The best way to get faster is to work to a price rather than day rate. When you realise you have under-priced it, you'll go oh sh*t and get your ar.se in gear.

 

[lancenotalot]

I did a shower room a couple of weeks ago,shower enclosure 3 walls 750x2000mm and a half wall 1500x1800mm comes out at just over 7sqm took me about 6 hours,that same work would have taken me about 2 days when I started tiling about 2 years ago so rest assured if you do it for a living you will speed up.
Only point I will make is don't sacrifice quality for speed,I would rather take a little longer to do the job and have a happy customer than rush it and leave a second rate job

 

[jefoss]

i personally would charge approx £360 for that job one day to tile (dont matter how long it takes even if something comes up ill do the whole job before i leave) next day to grout and finish, stick with it mate youll get there in the end.

 

[dan the man]

looks like a good job so thats the main thing. Finess over speed ANY day.

 

[Jasonb]

Use a manual cutter for your straight cuts on ceramic & porc, much faster and cleaner. Save the wet cutter for the difficult cuts only.

Jason

 

[Goldspoon]

Thanks for that Jason. I just worked that out (was using electric for all). Manual cutter so much faster!