One of the most common damages in any home is on tiles. Generally, tiles in the kitchen where things are dropped nearly daily! This is such an interesting topic, as we discuss what is possible from both stand points in turns of fixing chipped and damaged tiles caused by your children or you are dropping plates and glasses on them. Specifically, is it worth calling a professional to do the job or not. There are few key things that will be discussed such as, cost. Is cost your main reason for doing it yourself? Time also is major factor that links into cost. Would a professional tradesman be too timely for such a repair you could do? And the finish. What type of finish are you looking for.
Introduction: Relevant damage examples
Now firstly, I will discuss the everyday situations to give some relevance to the types of damages occurring for the repair. These situations funnily enough happen to myself a lot! Some of the situations I have experienced are when people are rushing around in the morning trying to get everything done and make sure everyone has got everything. Suddenly my multitasking turns into a hand smacking a glass onto the ground from the kitchen benchtop. This has happened too many times to count but also, even younger children grabbing onto their drink glasses and obviously throwing or dropping them. You can understand the situation of a large glass dropping directly onto a tile and what damages it causes! Here is a little photo to represent my story:
One of the second most common incidences is with door handles. Generally, all are made from a metal of sort and after continual use every day they seem to sometimes pop off the door and drop. Metal on tile is probably the worst combination! We have clients always sending very long messages discussing how this happens causing large chip and damages on their tiles in their kitchen and bathrooms. This transitions us into the whole discussion whether it is good to do the repairs yourself or call a professional to do the work.
Are Professionals good or bad?
Well one of the best solutions that we had initially thought of, was to use the tiles that were left over and saved from the floor of that house. A large portion of people don’t think too far into the future with their houses, so they do not end up saving their tiles. Ask any professional tradie and they would say this is the best solution to fixing
a damaged tile, replace with an old one. There have been some success stories but too many have not worked due to the professional has damaged the water sealing in that area underneath. Once this has been done then you must rip up all tiles on that floor and redo everything! Another issue that comes with replacing a tile, is that it is nearly impossible to colour match the grout surrounding the tile. Why you might ask? Well the issue is the person mixing the grout mixes more of one colour, less of another and no one has the ability with grout to rematch that colour correctly. It would look a little funny have a nice tile and then the grout as a big distraction because it’s the wrong colour.
With the wrong colour tile grout, you have obviously a significant problem, but no one discusses the costs that accumulate with professionals doing such repairs but wait! These are not repairs but renovations. I have previously spoken about in another blog on the costing difference between renovations and repairs, and whether it is worth the time and expenses because sometimes its better/smarter to renovate or repair. You should check out that blog, because it provides detailed insight for that situation. When we discuss tradesman and professionals looking to do your repair, they are always costly and the more niche the topic the more expensive they become BUT, if you have the budget then maybe it is worth seeking a second opinion since they might have a solution which could benefit you and not everyone.
DIY: The transition to doing it yourself!
I love the DIY Doing it yourself. It is perfect because you can achieve result that you expect for yourself and what you goal in doing at that moment. With repairs, it is perfect because you may have a small chip in the corner of the room where nobody looks that often and you don’t might fixing it to a 70% finish. There are also situations where we have damages on tiles from a glass dropping onto the floor and causing a very large damage too obvious people point out when walking into your kitchen! So, what to do?
Well when I first had all these damages the solution was to either find a tradesman or professional, but my budget was small as I was not willing to spend the thousands of dollars on renovations. So, I find some products in Sydny that people where using like puddies and filling products that seemed to be good. The major problem was they only came in white and black, not allowing for perfect colour matching.
Now we have a product which allows us to match any tile surface with any colour!
The solution is very simple with our products as they allow you to become the repairer without the costs. But this doesn’t mean every surface is paid for with our kits, but there are some surfaces that you can do yourself for thousand sofa dollars less. Such surfaces as, wood flooring, timber tables, and wood furniture, we provide a specific diy repair kit for that. This kit was created because it allows you to repair every wooden surface in your home. Then we have a Ceramic tile and stone kit where it can potentially fix all tiles, but when finishing high gloss surfaces it become hard to create the sheen.
After both the medium sized kits with have two smaller kits, one for sanitary ceramics. You could use the tile and stone kit but has said previously you would not get the high gloss finish making it 90% not 100% complete which we strive for. Then the last small kit is the stone and marble kit, which both these kits use a syringe system that must be cured by UV light making it much stronger than even the surface it is applied to
