Tore out a brand new tile backsplash yesterday after a dumb mistake

I was tiling my kitchen in my 1950s bungalow in Des Moines. Spent 6 hours setting the subway tile on Sunday, looked great. Then Monday morning I noticed the entire row above the stove was a half inch lower than the rest. I must have bumped the laser level while grabbing a beer. Had to pull 12 tiles off, scrape the thinset, and redo it. Cost me an extra $40 in thinset and a whole afternoon. Has anyone else had to redo fresh tile because of a leveling screw up?

3 comments

3 Comments

mark_chen626d ago

Yeah @cole_murphy's got it right, I used to think beer was fine but now I triple check with a level after the same mistake lmao

cole_murphy6d ago

Laser levels and beer don't mix, learned that the hard way too. After that I started checking the first row with a regular level before doing the rest.

miles_robinson206d ago

Man that's rough, I feel your pain. I had a similar thing happen with a shower niche I built where the grout lines just kept getting more and more crooked the further I went up. Did you check the first few tiles right after you set them or did you just trust the laser the whole time? I started checking every third row with a physical level after I had to rip out a whole shower floor I'd just laid.