It is a fair question and it deserves a specific answer rather than the word “quality”. Here is exactly what is inside our price, and what a cheaper quote is leaving out to get under it.
01
We check every wall to plane and every floor for fall before anything is fixed. On an architectural build the tolerance you were promised and the tolerance you actually have are rarely the same number. Correcting that is usually a full day that does not appear on a cheaper quote — which is precisely why that quote is cheaper, and why that floor telegraphs every hollow within five years.
02
Water reaches the waste because the floor is shaped to send it there, not because the adhesive bed was thickened on one side. The screed is set out with a laser level, so the fall is a measured number and not an eye. A shower that holds a puddle in one corner was built the other way.
03
Bond breaker at the corners, the correct upstand, the correct number of coats at the correct thickness — and then a full cure before anything covers it. That cure is a day on site where nothing visible happens, and it is priced as the day it is. It is the single most skipped step in the trade and the single most common cause of failure.
04
Correct notch, back-buttered where the format demands it. A void under a tile is not a cosmetic issue: it is where a crack starts the first time something heavy is dropped, and in a wet area it is where water collects.
05
Perimeter joints and internal corners to AS 3958.1. They are a visible line, and they are not decoration: tiles and the building they sit on move at different rates, and a field with nowhere to move will tent or crack. If you would rather not see them, tell us early — where they land is something set-out can often solve, but whether they exist is not.
06
We plan the grid around the sightline from the door, the centre of the vanity and the run under the rangehood. Full tiles where the eye lands, cuts where it does not, and the grid carried through thresholds. Set-out costs thinking time, not material — and it is most of what separates a good job from an expensive one.
Not marketing language — these are the documents that define what a compliant wet area actually is. Ask any tiler you are considering which ones they work to.
NZBC E3/AS1
Internal Moisture
The Building Code clause that governs wet areas. It sets where the surface has to stop water and where the water has to go.
AS/NZS 3740
Waterproofing of domestic wet areas
How the membrane is built: how far up the wall, how the corners are bonded, how the fall to the waste is formed.
AS 3958.1
Installation of ceramic tiles
Substrate tolerance, adhesive coverage and — the one most jobs skip — movement joints.
If the budget is fixed and tight, or the timeline cannot absorb a membrane cure, we are genuinely not your best option — and we would rather tell you now than halfway through. A rental turnaround or a straightforward re-grout does not need what we charge for.
Where we earn our price is the job you intend to keep: your own bathroom, a stone floor, a large format wall, anything where a failure means opening the room back up.
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