Sourcing travertine

[Construction Channel]

Hi everyone. 

A while ago I found the tile we liked on floorsofstone. Honed and polished ivory Travertine. It was on sale at £22/m. Which was fine but because I have taken too long its now £25-29 from anywhere. 

I seem to remember someone on here ( @JSHarris iirc) sourced it directly from abroard. 

Where and how did you do this? Or does anyone else have a secret supplier that is selling at a lower price? 

 

Tia 

Ed

[Jeremy Harris]

I sourced it from an eBay seller in Turkey.  I've had a very quick look and can't find them now, which is a pity.  They were selling whole pallet loads of Crema honed and polished travertine at a good price, but they wouldn't split a pallet load, so I ended up buying around 200, 400mm x 600mm tiles more than I needed (sold them to a neighbour).  IIRC the price was pretty good, around £16/m².  I remember that we paid nearly as much for adhesive, grout and sealant as we did for the travertine.

[Construction Channel]

7 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I sourced it from an eBay seller in Turkey.  I've had a very quick look and can't find them now, which is a pity.  They were selling whole pallet loads of Crema honed and polished travertine at a good price, but they wouldn't split a pallet load, so I ended up buying around 200, 400mm x 600mm tiles more than I needed (sold them to a neighbour).  IIRC the price was pretty good, around £16/m².  I remember that we paid nearly as much for adhesive, grout and sealant as we did for the travertine.

Thanks for that. I will keep an eye on ebay until I really need to buy them. The annoying thing is I could have easily stored them if I bought them on sale but it just wasn't high on my list of things to do at the time. 

[PeterW]

Travis have it believe it or not in 600x300 and it’s about £16/m. It’s part of their trade range. 

[Construction Channel]

Just to update. I took delivery of my floor tiles today. I eventually found some on ebay for £13.99/m in 610x406x12 which is the size I wanted. 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F273798505230

 

Now comparing the samples from int marble and floors of stone. The floors of stone one is quite a bit smoother and has a lot less defects. they may have just found a good tile to cut their samples out of but I will never know. 

 

Having taken a few out of the pallet From int marble I can confirm their sample is quite representative of what was delivered. Not perfectly smooth. Fairly holey on the back and tbh they could have done a better job of filling and honing the top on some but the majority seem perfectly acceptable. 

 

That said they are what I was looking for. They are less than half the price. They rounded the £1020 bill down to 1000 and threw in a couple of m2 for free. By the time iv sealed and grouted them they should become a bit smoother. 

 

All in all I'm happy. And I saved over 1k which can go towards paying some other bugger to lay them ?

 

[Jeremy Harris]

Looks very similar to ours, but a bit cheaper.  The crates and packing look identical, so if I had to guess I'd say they are probably from the same place originally.  The filling will wear down slightly after a few years, but that just gives a nicer texture to them, in our view.  We have had a handful of holes appear, where the has been a cavity just beneath the surface that's broken through after a while, but I had some left over cream grout and have just been filling the holes with that as they appear.  Seems to do a good job, as it's hard to see where I've made these small repairs.