# Million dollars doesn't buy quality



## GO Remodeling (Apr 5, 2005)

Meet a friend at his trim job. Several million dollar home under construction. Of course, I have to check the tile work. 

Here's what I found: no preslope under liner, liner punctured by drywall contractor screwing the threshold, and cbd punctured by screw 1" above shower floor. Ditra will be used for the walls and bench seats.

A setter installing 16x16 marble with swirled thinset pattern. No fiberglass tape on floor cbd seams. 

I mentioned he might want to mention the liner flaws to the GC so their aren't any problems. Sad that the quality isn't there.


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## Creter (Oct 13, 2009)

It's funny, not ha ha, how that works at times. 

There are a lot of doers but not so many knowers...


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## mako1 (Sep 1, 2013)

Back in the 90's I installed 72lf of my custom built cabinets in a 30X32' kitchen including a 10' radius half round island on a pedestal with a 4' grill in the top.It was a $1.6m house.
They bought $37k of Viking commercial appliances for the kitchen.The appliance installers scratched the hell out of every cabinet that was even close.Tile and finish work thru the house was decent but the drywall work and framing sucked.It looked like a 6,500sf $50,000 house.
This was in a subdivision by the country club where everyone used the same contractor.


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## PrecisionFloors (Jan 24, 2006)

Same thing here. I've seen recessed pans with no liner at all... I kid you not. There are crews setting custom showers for $2/sf. Yeah.


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## Splinter (Apr 5, 2005)

This is in a brand new multi-milion dollar home I worked on last summer. 
Duct tape is acceptable for patching liners, right? They screwed cement board over everything the next day.

I was working directly for the homeowner, not the GC, so I discreetly mentioned this hack to him on the phone one night. He brought it up to the tile guy, who then promised to roll a coat of RedGard on the curb.


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## jhark123 (Aug 26, 2008)

LOL


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## MIKE ANTONETTI (Jul 17, 2012)

Not to let anyone figure out, but one time we installed some material on a home that should've been bulldozed, and a couple hundred thousand was going over top of this mess.
New there's no excuse except for ignorance and lower bids.


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## Calidecks (Nov 19, 2011)

olzo55 said:


> Meet a friend at his trim job. Several million dollar home under construction. Of course, I have to check the tile work.
> 
> Here's what I found: no preslope under liner, liner punctured by drywall contractor screwing the threshold, and cbd punctured by screw 1" above shower floor. Ditra will be used for the walls and bench seats.
> 
> ...


I'm not a tile guy, so please school me on what's wrong with thinset swirl patterns.


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## m1911 (Feb 24, 2009)

Californiadecks said:


> I'm not a tile guy, so please school me on what's *wrong with thinset swirl* patterns.


It doesn't allow the thinset to be distributed evenly, and possibly traps air pockets, not providing even support for entire large tile.


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## Big Shoe (Jun 16, 2008)

...........Never mind


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## LI-Remodeler (Feb 3, 2015)

Splinter said:


> This is in a brand new multi-milion dollar home I worked on last summer.
> Duct tape is acceptable for patching liners, right? They screwed cement board over everything the next day.
> 
> I was working directly for the homeowner, not the GC, so I discreetly mentioned this hack to him on the phone one night. He brought it up to the tile guy, who then promised to roll a coat of RedGard on the curb.


Hello fellow Long Islander, I've seen it all myself on expensive homes. It's not what you would expect, but it's more common than not. 

The biggest flaw that I notice (only because it's easy to see driving by) are windows, WRB, Flashing, all being installed incorrectly. Basically a leak just waiting to happen during the next wind driven rain. 

Quality does come with a high price, but unfortunately low quality can come with a high price as well and it seems the later is common.


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## Red Adobe (Jul 26, 2008)

I put lights in a large walk-in shower being built last month, they had a pan and green board and were on my heels to hang the cans......I asked the tile guy in my best mexican how low on the joist to set the cans....1 inch , or 1 1/4 ?

He say treequarta and looked at me like I was the idiota :whistling

Seems many new homes here are tiled just over greenboard , atleast the old ones were lath and bed and usualy a PITA to demo or do electrical in.


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## greg24k (May 19, 2007)

What you expect for 2 mil everything?


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