Anyone know a good large format tile cutting company?

[hendriQ]

I am about to order two large format tiles which are 1600x3200x6 each, made of porcelain. I have designed a tile cutting plan (attached) that will enable me to fit these on the wall in a nook to make a shower enclosure. Red lines show the outline of the tile, black lines show where cuts are required. The tile cutting is pretty intricate, but I was still absolutely gobsmacked when the first company I approached quoted me £2400 plus VAT, just for the cutting!

Maybe @nod or someone else with large format experience can recommend a company that will price this more reasonably. I can't imagine it is more than 1 day's work tops and whilst I appreciate specialist equipment will be required, I really had only budgeted about £500 for the cutting.

Thanks people!

[Dan F]

Are you installing yourself? 

 

Our tiler is cutting on-site and installing these same 6mm large format tiles. From talking to him these large tiles also have somewhat tricky installation procedure which is more complex than standard tiles and requires a vibration tool to avoid trapped air etc.

[nod]

I would always cut on-site We rarely transport tiles ourselves 

A decent tiler would have or hire the cutting gear 

I’d just get the tiles delivered to site and get a quote for cutting and fixing 

 

We normally cut a card template for anything intricate 

[hendriQ]

48 minutes ago, Dan F said:

Are you installing yourself? 

 

Our tiler is cutting on-site and installing these same 6mm large format tiles. From talking to him these large tiles also have somewhat tricky installation procedure which is more complex than standard tiles and requires a vibration tool to avoid trapped air etc.

No, my builder is doing all tiling. I thought he was unlikely to have the tools to do such large format tile cutting. The cut out for the shower valve looks pretty tricky to do. We are behind schedule and there is a lot of tiling to do three bathrooms plus a kitchen, utility, hallway and feature wall, so I thought I would speed the process up by getting the tiles cut by a specialist company. I will speak to the builder.

 

If not, @nod do you fancy the job?

[nod]

17 minutes ago, hendriQ said:

No, my builder is doing all tiling. I thought he was unlikely to have the tools to do such large format tile cutting. The cut out for the shower valve looks pretty tricky to do. We are behind schedule and there is a lot of tiling to do three bathrooms plus a kitchen, utility, hallway and feature wall, so I thought I would speed the process up by getting the tiles cut by a specialist company. I will speak to the builder.

 

If not, @nod do you fancy the job?

We are completely booked for two years now 

 

[Nickfromwales]

I’m trying to work out what exactly are the required number of cuts? 

Edited July 17, 2021 by Nickfromwales

[Triassic]

Our tiler does all the cuts on site, more of them freehand!

[hendriQ]

So I still haven't ordered these two enormous tiles because the price of getting the specialist tile cutting company was putting me off and I haven't had a chance yet to discuss it the alternative plan with my main contractor which is to get him to do it and see what his reaction is. I agreed a fixed price with him for tiling 3 bathrooms, the sizes of which he could take from the floorplans. Now maybe it's unfair to expect him to cut and tile a series of floor to ceiling tiles, each made of one piece, arranged in a curve as shown in the render.  Those thin slivers in the curved corner of the shower enclosure are 40mm by 2520mm and there are eight of them. Those, along with the cut out for the shower valve, are probably the hardest to do and the riskiest in terms of potential breakages. I don't know, never cut a 6mm tile in my life, but I imagine that although porcelain is super strong it is also quite brittle and mabe a 40mm by 2520mm piece or a cut out of a 150mm by 60mm piece from the middle of a much larger rectangle is taking the material to its limits and risking breakages. At £500 a tile, each breakage would be rather expensive!

 

We had dinner this evening with a friend of ours who is a seasoned project manager and interior designer. I showed her my tile cutting plan (attached to the original post in this thread) and the below render and she thought I was mad - and she tends only to do super high end stuff that is pretty much at the forefront of design, so this really surprised me. She said I deserved the price the tile cutting company had quoted for coming up with such a crazy idea and that my architect had made a mistake in not including this detail expressly within the tender package to make it crystal clear to the contractor that this is what he was signing up to do. To be fair, this actual design was not my idea at all, albeit I have now fallen in love with it. Am I mad or is my friend overstating the difficulty of cutting and installing such thin and long pieces? There are 32 pieces which are 40mm in width. 8 of them are 2520 long, 12 are half 600 and 12 are 1000 long.

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by hendriQ

[dpmiller]

personally, I think you're mad too...

[PeterW]

7 hours ago, hendriQ said:

I don't know, never cut a 6mm tile in my life, but I imagine that although porcelain is super strong it is also quite brittle and mabe a 40mm by 2520mm piece or a cut out of a 150mm by 60mm piece from the middle of a much larger rectangle is taking the material to its limits and risking breakages. At £500 a tile, each breakage would be rather expensive!

ok so that wouldn’t be on any plans or tender so your contractor is within his rights to say no. I would too ..!! 
 

Porcelain isn’t good at elastic / tensile bends so when you cut it then you create stress and it will break. At 40mm slices at that length there is no way of on site cutting that so you would need it to be water jetted. I’d expect about £15 a cut, so you’re probably at £5-600 for cutting but would add 50% for breakages so two tiles, cutting etc would be £15-1800. 
 

Redesign it. 

[Mr Punter]

Looks absolutely bonkers and destined to disappointment.

[Onoff]

Why not ditch those (silly, imo), long tile slivers and go with 316 polished stainless strips, 6mm thick.  If say that's more doable. It'll be a bitch to do whatever.

[Ferdinand]

I concur that you are mad.

 

If you just want the pain there are plenty of services which offer it, or you can probably get an original Battle of Trafalgar Cat-o-nine-tails for that money ?

 

As to constructive alternatives, what about a 45 degree corner,  or mosaic tiles? Or is there an annealed glass or other product, which can be made to size? Or something printed on a stiff but flexible backing?

 

Plus a weekend in a very very very posh hotel on holiday with the money you have saved, or donate to a local charity to help them rebuild services after Covid.

 

[Ronan 1]

I really like them as per the picture, and it comes down to how much it's worth to you. I'd talk to your builder / tiler and ask for a price as you want it and a price for his suggested alternative and then you'll know what it will cost you and if it's worth it you then the pain of getting right will be on him which I'm sure he will price 9nto the job and if you can't live with the price at least you'll know

 

But I'd reckon it's definitely not going to be cheap

[Pocster]

I think it looks mega !

But at a certain individual threshold mega turns into tears at the cost .

I frequently cry .

[Hobbiniho]

I think your mad, as the tiles have a pattern 1 broken sliver means the whole tile is scrap.

 

If it was me i would just venetian plaster it ??

[Temp]

Yikes. All those very long thin strips. Not a chance of cutting them all without several breaking. I suspect you can't even pick up such long thin strips without them breaking under their own weight. I'd look at using shorter strips on the curved parts, something like this aspect ratio.. 

 

https://m.facebook.com/gilesbrostiling/posts/marble-mosaics-on-curved-wall/1099325933556049/

 

 

    

Edited July 24, 2021 by Temp

[patp]

On 17/07/2021 at 15:43, nod said:

We are completely booked for two years now 

 

Eeeek! We have dropped the ball in project managing the tiler to come and do our tiling. We will be ready for them on Tuesday! Have been told six weeks by one with a good reputation around here so perhaps I should feel lucky?

[nod]

12 minutes ago, patp said:

Eeeek! We have dropped the ball in project managing the tiler to come and do our tiling. We will be ready for them on Tuesday! Have been told six weeks by one with a good reputation around here so perhaps I should feel lucky?

6-8 weeks is about normal at the moment 

But should improve in October 

 

Tiling is only part of my business with plastering framing and render 
Most of our workload is due to contracts being canceled and reinstated 

Even office builds are back 

Labour shortages is a real problem Even on large sites 

No cash work on sites 

Smaller jobs like self builds are benefiting 

[hendriQ]

There were a lot of doubters on this thread. It couldn’t be done, they cried. I’m mad, they said.

 

They were wrong:

 

 

We changed the colour of the towel heater, but otherwise nailed the render spot on! Tile cutting company were excellent. Only mistake they made was that they forgot to label the pieces, which gave me an interesting game to play matching the adjacent tiles; took me a day to match them all up. Was a fun day, though required a lot of care; turns out that 2520 by 40 by 6mm porcelain is harder to slide around than the average puzzle piece.

 

#focuseddetermination

#nevergiveuponyourdreams

 

 

[hendriQ]

On 24/07/2021 at 23:08, Temp said:

All those very long thin strips. Not a chance of cutting them all without several breaking. I suspect you can't even pick up such long thin strips without them breaking under their own weight. I'd look at using shorter strips on the curved parts

Doubter numero 1

[hendriQ]

On 24/07/2021 at 22:24, Hobbiniho said:

I think your mad, as the tiles have a pattern 1 broken sliver means the whole tile is scrap.

 

Nothing wrong with being mad, when it works.

[hendriQ]

On 24/07/2021 at 09:22, Mr Punter said:

Looks absolutely bonkers and destined to disappointment.

Also a doubter. Come on people, you need to be more optimistic in life!

[hendriQ]

On 24/07/2021 at 11:10, Ferdinand said:

I concur that you are mad.

I love being mad sometimes

[hendriQ]

On 24/07/2021 at 09:46, Onoff said:

Why not ditch those (silly, imo), long tile slivers and go with 316 polished stainless strips, 6mm thick.  If say that's more doable. It'll be a bitch to do whatever.

Silly?