Tile Repair Service Cost WA 2026 - Complete Pricing Guide

Tile Repair Costs in Western Australia for 2026

Tiles rarely fail on their own, so a tile repair quote is really a diagnosis with a price attached. The cheap end of the range is genuine physical damage. One tile cracked by something dropped on it comes out and a replacement goes in for $150 to $380, and most of that is the trade visit rather than the tile. Grout that has gone powdery or dark is $450 to $1,200 for a bathroom floor and walls, and a shower regrouted and resealed is $380 to $950. None of those jobs involve touching the substrate underneath.

The expensive end of the range is movement. Drummy tiles relaid properly run $85 to $180 a square metre. A floor that has tented, meaning the tiles have risen into a ridge because they had nowhere to expand, costs $120 to $260 a square metre to lift and relay, plus $55 to $130 a metre for the movement joints that should have been cut in originally. A full removal and retile is $95 to $220 a square metre. New work as opposed to repair sits under tiling.

Western Australian houses fail in a particular pattern and it comes down to how they are built. Double brick on a slab, with an open plan living area tiled in one continuous run through a glazed wall to an alfresco, puts a large area of tile under direct sun with masonry restraint on every side. The tiling standard requires movement joints at 4.5 metre spacing where a sunlit floor exceeds 6 metres in any dimension, and a great many Perth floors were laid as one unbroken field. There is a second local factor in the ground. Most of the metropolitan area sits on sand, a stable and forgiving soil, but fill sites in the growth corridors and clay bands through the eastern suburbs and the hills move seasonally and crack tiles in straight lines. Where a crack runs across several tiles in a line the problem is below the tile, and that is concrete and crack repair or structural inspection territory before anybody retiles.

What Actually Fails on a Tiled Surface

Five things go wrong with tiling and they have different causes, different prices and different chances of coming back. A broken tile is the obvious one and the least interesting. Impact damage, a dropped pan, a chair leg without a pad, a dragged appliance. The tile is damaged and the bed under it is fine, so replacing the tile ends the matter. These are the repairs where the main difficulty is finding a tile that matches.

Debonding is the one that turns up most often. The tile has lost its grip on the bed or the bed has lost its grip on the substrate, and the tile sounds hollow when tapped. The causes are a thin or patchy adhesive bed, a dusty or unprimed substrate, the wrong adhesive for the tile, or tiling onto a slab that had not finished shrinking. Debonded tiles are still in place and still look fine, which is why owners find them by accident.

Movement failure is the expensive one to put right. Tiles crack in a line, or lift into a ridge, or push grout out of the joints and powder it. The tiled field has been restrained and something had to give. Thermal expansion in a sunlit floor, slab shrinkage in the first year, seasonal clay movement and settlement on a fill site all produce this, and the fix involves the floor and not the tile.

Then come the two failures that water drives. Grout and silicone degrade, and that is maintenance and cheap. Waterproofing failure behind a shower is not maintenance, and by the time it shows on the far side of a wall the repair involves stripping back and starting again. Dedicated shower regrouting and leak repairs handle the first and bathroom waterproofing the second.

Drummy and Debonded Tiles

Drummy is the trade word for a tile that has lost its bond and sounds hollow, and it turns up more than anything else on a Western Australian tile inspection. The bond fails in one of two planes. Either the adhesive has released from the back of the tile, which points at poor coverage, a dusty tile back or the wrong adhesive for a low-porosity porcelain, or the adhesive has released from the substrate, which points at a dusty or unprimed slab, a curing compound left on the concrete, or a slab that was still shrinking when it was tiled. A tiler can usually tell which by looking at the back of the first tile lifted.

Adhesive coverage turns out to be the recurring culprit here. The standard expects a high proportion of the tile back to be in contact with adhesive, and a tile spot-bedded on five dabs will hold for years and then let go, often after something heavy rolls across it. Large format tiles make this worse because the span between dabs is greater, and large format is now the default in WA new builds.

Relaying runs $85 to $180 a square metre and the variation is mostly about whether the existing tiles can be lifted intact. Modern thin porcelain lifted off a strong bed usually breaks, so what matters is whether you have spare tiles. Ceramic tiles on a weak bed often come up whole. A tiler will tell you the likely survival rate after lifting two or three.

Where drumminess is widespread instead of patchy, relaying area by area turns into chasing the problem around the house. At somewhere between a third and a half of the floor affected, a full removal and retile at $95 to $220 a square metre becomes better value and gives you a sound bed, correct movement joints and tiles that all match. Brands commonly available through Perth suppliers for the adhesive and levelling side include Ardex, Mapei, Davco, Sika and Bostik.

Tenting, Peaking and Sudden Lifting

Tenting is the failure that frightens people, because it happens in minutes and makes a noise. A tiled floor expands as it warms up. Where the field is large and every edge is restrained by masonry, the expansion has nowhere to go, so compression builds across the floor until the weakest joint gives and two rows of tiles lift against each other into a ridge. Owners describe a crack like a gunshot and a floor that has risen 20 or 30 millimetres overnight. It happens most often in the first hot spell of summer and most often in the room with the biggest glazed opening.

Western Australian houses are unusually exposed to this. Double brick means the restraint on every side is brickwork, not a flexible stud wall. Open plan living areas give long uninterrupted runs. And the standard sliding or stacker door onto an alfresco puts direct Perth sun on a large area of dark tile for hours a day. A floor laid in one continuous field from the kitchen through to the outdoor area with no joint anywhere is the textbook case.

Repair is not a matter of gluing the tiles back down. The affected tiles are lifted, the bed is assessed, movement joints are cut in at the correct spacing including a perimeter joint against the walls, and the area is relaid. That is $120 to $260 a square metre plus $55 to $130 a metre for the joints. Relaying without cutting joints is a guarantee of a second failure, and any quote that does not mention joints should be queried. Tented tiles are also a trip hazard and a lifted ridge will keep moving, so this is one tile problem to treat as urgent, not cosmetic. In a rental the owner carries the obligation, and in a strata property a tented floor in a common area is a strata matter and not an owner one.

Movement Joints and the 4.5 Metre Rule

Owners have never heard of this part of tiling, and it decides whether a floor lasts. The Australian standard for ceramic tiling, AS 3958, sets out where joints have to go. For an internal floor, where any dimension exceeds 9 metres, joints are required at a spacing no greater than 4.5 metres. Where the floor is in direct sunlight and a dimension exceeds 6 metres, that same 4.5 metre spacing applies. External tiling needs joints at 4.5 metre spacing in any dimension regardless of sun.

Perimeter joints matter just as much and are the ones most often missing. A joint at least 6 millimetres wide is required where the tiling meets a restraining surface, with a narrow exception for areas under 10 square metres where the tiles sit a minimum of 3 millimetres clear of the restraint. In practice that means the tile should not be hard against the brickwork, and a skirting or a silicone joint should be covering a real gap, never hiding a tight fit. Walls carry a separate set of requirements of their own. A 6 millimetre joint is needed over existing movement joints in the substrate, where tiling abuts another cladding material, at the vertical corners of a shower compartment, and horizontally at storey heights between 3 and 4.5 metres apart. The shower corner joint is the one that keeps turning up as a leak years later when it was grouted solid instead.

Retrofitting joints into an existing floor is genuinely useful work and costs $55 to $130 a metre. A joint is cut through the tile and the bed with a diamond blade on a dust-extracted saw, cleaned out and filled with a flexible sealant or a proprietary joint profile. Done in the right positions it relieves the floor and often stops further tenting without relaying anything. Products from Schluter, Latham and Unison are common for proprietary profiles in the Perth market.

If you are having new tiling laid anywhere in this state, ask where the joints are going before work starts and get the answer on the quote. It costs almost nothing at install and thousands later. Full specification of the standard sits with Standards Australia, and the building provisions that reference it with the Australian Building Codes Board.

Cracked Tiles and Finding a Match

Replacing one tile costs less than anything else here, and supply derails it far more often than labour does. The physical job itself is straightforward enough to describe. The grout around the tile is cut out, the tile is broken out from the centre to avoid damaging its neighbours, the bed is cleaned back, a new tile is bedded and the joint regrouted. A tiler will charge $150 to $380 for the visit, and additional tiles in the same visit cost far less than the first because the mobilisation is already paid for. Have the whole lot done in one visit.

Matching the existing tile is the real problem. Tile ranges change constantly, dye lots vary within a range, and a floor laid eight years ago is unlikely to have an exact current equivalent. Check the garage, the roof space and under the laundry trough first, because the original tiler often left offcuts and a box of spares. If there are none, a tiler or a Perth tile supplier may be able to source a discontinued line from remaining stock, and WA suppliers including Beaumont Tiles, National Tiles and Tile Factory Outlet are worth asking.

Where no match exists there are three honest options. Take a tile from a concealed area such as under the dishwasher, inside a wardrobe or behind a toilet pan and use it for the visible repair, the trick most tilers suggest first. Accept a close match in place of an exact one and put it where it is least noticed. Or make a deliberate feature of a contrasting tile, which works in a laundry and almost never in a living area.

A crack worth noticing is one that continues across more than one tile in a line. That is the substrate cracking and the tile reporting it, so replacing tiles along the line will produce a fresh crack in the same position. Have the slab looked at first, and where seasonal clay movement is involved underpinning services or a structural engineer may need to be part of the conversation.

Grout Failure and Regrouting

Grout is a consumable and treating it as one saves money, because grout that is maintained keeps water away from everything expensive behind it. Grout fails in three recognisable ways and they mean different things. Powdery grout crumbling out of the joint usually means compression in the floor, so the grout is being crushed and the real problem is movement, not the grout itself. Dark or permanently damp grout in a wet area means moisture is sitting behind the tile and is not getting out. Grout that is simply worn, stained and tired is age, cleaning chemicals and traffic, and that is the easy one.

Regrouting means raking the old grout out of the joints with an oscillating tool or a grout saw, cleaning, and refilling. A bathroom floor and walls runs $450 to $1,200 depending on the area and the joint width. The work is laborious more than skilled, and that is why quotes vary and why the cheap end of the market is tempting. What you are paying for is the raking depth, because grout skimmed over the top of old grout will fail again within a year.

Epoxy grout is the upgrade worth considering in a wet area. It costs more to supply and is harder to work with, so expect the top of the range, but it does not absorb water, does not stain and does not need sealing. Cement-based grout in a shower will always be the weak point. Mapei, Ardex and Davco all supply epoxy systems through Perth trade outlets.

One common mistake deserves a mention before moving on. Silicone and grout are not interchangeable materials, whatever a quote implies. Internal corners, the junction between a wall and a floor, and the perimeter of a tiled area are movement joints and belong in flexible silicone. Grout in those positions cracks out, and a tiler who grouts a shower corner solid has created the leak path that shows up three years later. Regular servicing of these joints is shower regrouting work.

Shower Leaks and Waterproofing

A leaking shower is the most expensive tile problem in an ordinary house, because the water is already somewhere you cannot see when you first notice it. The giveaway signs are on the other side of the wall rather than in the bathroom. Skirting lifting in the adjoining hallway, a dark patch at the base of a wall, paint bubbling in a bedroom that shares a wall with the shower, a musty smell in a built-in robe, or in a double brick house a damp patch and salt bloom on the brickwork outside. Inside the shower the clues are dark grout at the base, silicone lifting at the corners and a floor that stays wet.

The cause is almost always one of three things. The waterproof membrane has failed or was never installed correctly, particularly at the junction between the wall and floor and around the waste. The internal corners were grouted instead of siliconed, so there is a crack running the full height of the corner. Or the shower screen was sealed on the wrong side, letting water track under the frame.

Pricing splits sharply between the available options. A regrout and reseal at $380 to $950 addresses the surface and will hold where the membrane below is sound. There are also injection systems that introduce a sealing resin into the grout and bed without removing tiles, and these run $600 to $1,600 and do work on some failures. Where the membrane has failed, the honest answer is stripping the shower back, rewaterproofing to AS 3740 and retiling at $2,200 to $5,500.

Be careful with a quote that offers a seal-only fix on a shower that is already damaging the room next door. If water has reached the adjoining wall, the membrane is not doing its job and a surface treatment is buying time instead of fixing it. Ask the contractor directly whether they believe the membrane has failed, and ask what happens if the surface fix does not hold. Full wet area work falls under bathroom waterproofing and larger jobs become bathroom renovation.

Tiling to Western Australian Double Brick

Double brick construction changes tiling work in ways that trades from the eastern states consistently underestimate. In a framed house a wall tiler works onto fibre cement sheet or waterproofed plasterboard, a surface that is flat, predictable and easy to fix into. In a Perth double brick house the internal leaf is brickwork, usually render coated, sometimes with a hard cement render and sometimes with a sand cement float that has been there fifty years. Tiling onto that means assessing the render before anything else, because tiles bonded to drummy render will come off with the render still attached to their backs.

That assessment is the step most often skipped. A render that sounds hollow has to come off back to the brickwork and be replaced before tiling, and that adds $45 to $95 a square metre to the job. Anybody quoting wall tiling in a double brick bathroom without tapping the walls has not priced the real scope, and the variation arrives once the old tiles are off. Render work of this kind is render repair and rendering and texture coating territory.

Brickwork also has consequences for services and fixings. Chasing a pipe or a cable into a loadbearing brick leaf is restricted work that needs care and sometimes engineering input, so relocating a shower mixer during a tile repair is a bigger job here than in a framed house. Fixing a grab rail, a frameless screen or a heavy wall-hung vanity into render over brick needs a mechanical anchor into the brick itself, not a plug in the render. The flip side is that double brick walls barely move, so wall tiling in a WA house is less prone to the movement cracking seen on framed walls that shrink and flex. Where wall tiles do fail here, the cause is nearly always moisture or render failure, not structural movement, and that narrows the diagnosis usefully.

Outdoor, Alfresco and Natural Stone

Outdoor tiling in Perth works harder than almost anywhere in the country, and the repair bills reflect it. An alfresco, a pool surround or a west-facing patio in this climate takes extreme surface temperatures, hard ultraviolet exposure, winter saturation and in coastal suburbs airborne salt. External tiling needs movement joints at 4.5 metre spacing in any dimension, needs a fall to drainage, and needs an exterior-grade adhesive and a flexible grout. Where it is over habitable space or a membrane it also needs waterproofing to AS 4654. Many outdoor areas in WA were built with none of that.

Natural stone brings a set of failures of its own. Travertine, limestone and sandstone are porous, so they absorb water and they are vulnerable to salt. In a pool surround that means efflorescence and spalling at the edges. Limestone and travertine also react to acid, so an owner cleaning an outdoor area with a hydrochloric-based product can etch the whole surface in an afternoon. Repair of etched stone means honing or replacement rather than cleaning.

Sealing counts as maintenance rather than a one-off job. A penetrating sealer on porous outdoor stone lasts two to four years in Perth conditions and less on a trafficked pool surround. Resealing a typical alfresco or surround runs $12 to $28 a square metre and costs less than anything else you can do to extend the life of the stone. A surface-film sealer is the one to avoid outdoors, because it goes cloudy and peels under ultraviolet.

Where outdoor tiles have lifted, check the fall and the drainage before relaying. Water sitting under tile at the low point is a common cause of debonding in Perth where a surround drains towards the house instead of away from it, and the sand profile means it never shows as a puddle. Related work includes pool tile and surface repairs and waterproofing services for anything over a membrane.

Efflorescence and Salt Attack

The white crystalline bloom that appears at tile joints and along the base of walls is a moisture message and not a cleaning problem. Efflorescence happens when water moves through a cementitious material, dissolves soluble salts, reaches the surface and evaporates, leaving the salt behind. The salt itself does no harm at all. What matters is that its presence proves water is moving through the material, so scrubbing it off without finding the water means it returns. Where the crystals form behind the surface instead of on it, the pressure can spall the face off a tile or a stone, and that is called subflorescence.

Western Australia supplies those salts more generously than most places. Limestone sits under much of the coastal plain and limestone is calcium carbonate. Reconstituted limestone blocks and limestone retaining walls are everywhere in Perth gardens. Groundwater in the coastal suburbs is often saline. Reticulation water from a bore is frequently high in dissolved minerals and iron. Sprinkler overspray onto a tiled or rendered surface day after day delivers salt directly to it.

The fix follows the source and not the symptom. If it is sprinkler overspray, adjust the reticulation, which costs nothing. Where it is a tiled area with no fall and standing water underneath, correct the drainage. If a retaining wall or a planter sits against a tiled surface, the answer is waterproofing and drainage behind the wall, which is limestone rendering and wall drainage work. If it is rising damp in an old Fremantle or inner-suburb limestone or brick cottage, it needs a damp specialist and not a tiler.

Removal, once the source is dealt with, is straightforward. Dry brushing first, then a proprietary efflorescence remover if needed. Avoid hydrochloric acid on anything containing limestone or on coloured grout, since it will etch the stone and bleach the joint. Expect $8 to $20 a square metre for cleaning as part of a larger repair, and understand that it will come back if the water has not been stopped.

Asbestos in Old Tiles and Adhesives

Any tile repair in a Western Australian house built before 1990 should start with a question about asbestos, and this state has more reason to take it seriously than most. Three things in an older floor can contain asbestos. Vinyl floor tiles, typically 9 inch squares, often under later carpet or tiles. The backing paper and the bitumen-based black adhesive used to stick them down, the most commonly disturbed material of the three. And fibre cement sheet used as a floor underlay or as a wet area wall lining. Vinyl sheet flooring of the era can also have a backing containing asbestos.

Those materials are stable while they are undisturbed. Tiling work disturbs them by definition, because lifting tiles, grinding off old adhesive or cutting into a floor all generate dust. Grinding is the dangerous step, and that is exactly what a tiler does to prepare a surface, so the identification has to happen before the quote, not during the job.

Western Australian rules on this are specific and sit in two places. A homeowner may remove up to 10 square metres of non-friable asbestos themselves, though WorkSafe strongly recommends using a licensed removalist regardless. Beyond that area, or for any friable asbestos, licensed removal is mandatory. There are three licence categories: a Class A removalist for all asbestos including friable, a Class B removalist for non-friable only, and a licensed assessor for air monitoring and clearance certificates. Licensed removal work must be notified to WorkSafe at least five days before it begins.

Testing is cheap when set against the alternative. A sample analysed by a laboratory costs $60 to $150 and settles the question, and asbestos testing and inspection covers it. Removal of a bonded floor covering runs $45 to $110 a square metre with disposal, and asbestos removal handles the licensed work. WorkSafe publishes the requirements at WorkSafe Western Australia, with national guidance from Safe Work Australia.

Slab Movement, Fill Sites and Clay Bands

Where a tile crack runs in a line across several tiles, the tile is a witness and not the defendant. The sand of the Swan Coastal Plain underlies most of the Perth metropolitan area, and sand is a kind soil for slabs. It does not shrink and swell with moisture the way reactive clay does, so Perth sees proportionally less of the seasonal cracking that plagues Melbourne and Adelaide. That is the good news, and it covers most of the housing stock.

Three situations break that general rule in this state. Fill sites in the growth corridors, where a block was built up with imported material that was not compacted to the depth it needed, settle over the first decade. Clay bands through the eastern suburbs and the Perth hills do move seasonally. And limestone under the sand can leave a slab partly bearing on rock and partly on sand, which produces differential settlement and a crack running along the boundary between the two conditions.

A new slab is also still shrinking for months. Concrete continues to lose moisture and contract for months, and tiling too early locks the tiles to a floor that is still moving. Cracks appearing in the first two years of a new build, running in straight lines and often from a re-entrant corner, are most likely slab shrinkage and not anything structural, and in a new home that is a builder warranty conversation before it is a tiler conversation.

The practical sequence is to identify the crack before you repair the tile. Mark both ends of the crack with a pencil and date it, then look again in three months. A crack that has not moved is dormant and the tiles can be replaced with a flexible adhesive and a movement joint over the crack. A crack that is still extending needs structural inspection, and in the worst cases underpinning before any tiling is worth doing.

Licensing, Contracts and WA Thresholds

Tiling sits in an awkward spot in Western Australian regulation, and knowing where the lines fall protects you on the larger jobs. Oversight of building work here sits with Building and Energy, a regulator inside the Department of Local Government, Industry Regulation and Safety whose two statutory officers are the Building Commissioner and the Director of Energy Safety. Tiling itself is not a separately licensed trade here, unlike electrical or plumbing work, so there is no tiling licence number to check. What exists instead is builder registration, which bites above a value threshold, and the general consumer law.

Three numbers shape the paperwork on this work. The written home building contract requirement covers fixed-price residential work from $7,500 up to $500,000. Home indemnity insurance kicks in once permitted work passes $20,000, and its deposit-loss cover reaches $40,000. No deposit may exceed 6.5 per cent of the contract price. All three are particular to Western Australia and differ from New South Wales and Victoria.

Almost every tile repair falls below $7,500, so a tiler can lawfully do the work without builder registration. Get the scope in writing anyway, including the area, the adhesive and grout being used, where movement joints are going and what happens if the bed is found to be worse than expected. A full bathroom strip and retile can cross $7,500, and a larger renovation can cross $20,000 and bring the registration and insurance obligations into play.

Waterproofing is the part to watch most closely. In Western Australia waterproofing a wet area is not carved out as a separate plumbing licence class the way it is in Victoria, so the protection you have is the standard, the contract and the statutory guarantees in place of a licence. Ask for the membrane product and the standard it is being installed to, and ask for the manufacturer warranty documentation. Consumer guarantees are administered by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the regulations with Western Australian Legislation.

Perth Metropolitan Pricing

Plenty of tilers work the metropolitan area and the small-job market is competitive, so the main cost lever here is how you package the work. Minimum charges dominate the small repair end of the market. A single cracked tile is almost all mobilisation, so one tile and six tiles cost nearly the same. Walk the house, mark everything that needs doing with tape, and get it all done in one visit. The same logic applies to regrouting: a shower alone and a whole bathroom differ by far less than the areas suggest.

Three sub-markets behave differently inside the metro area. The western and coastal suburbs carry more natural stone, more travertine pool surrounds and more salt-driven failure, and stone work is a specialist skill priced above ceramic. The northern and southern corridors are full of large format porcelain laid in big unbroken fields over the past twenty years, and that is the tenting and movement joint market. The hills and the eastern suburbs see more substrate cracking because of clay, so more of the work there starts with an assessment before a tiler.

Double brick raises the cost of wall work specifically. Where render has to come off and be replaced before tiling, add $45 to $95 a square metre, and in an older bathroom that is a real possibility and not a remote one. A quote that does not mention the condition of the render behind existing wall tiles has not been scoped. For larger projects across the metro area, bathroom renovation and renovation services cover the work that tiling forms part of.

Regional Western Australia Pricing

Away from Perth the labour rate moves less than the logistics do, and tiles are heavy, fragile and awkward to freight. Mandurah, Peel and the South West through Bunbury, Busselton and Margaret River have working local tiling trades and only a modest loading. Tilers operate in Albany, the Great Southern and Geraldton, with thinner supply, so a discontinued or specialty tile means freight from Perth and a lead time. Loadings of 15 to 40 per cent above metropolitan rates are normal.

In the Goldfields, the Pilbara, the Gascoyne and the Kimberley the sensible approach is to batch everything. Mobilisation dominates the cost, so one visit covering tiling, regrouting, shower work and anything else needed is far better value than three. Loadings there run 35 to 80 per cent above metropolitan rates. Freight breakage on tiles is a real line item, so order a generous allowance instead of the usual ten per cent.

Conditions change the technical approach in the north. Adhesives and grouts have working temperature limits and open times that shorten in heat, so a Pilbara summer makes large format floor work noticeably harder and pushes it towards the cooler months. Waterproofing membranes also have cure requirements that heat and humidity affect, so a shower rebuild during the wet season needs more time between stages, not less. Owners a long way out get real value from doing the easy maintenance locally. Resealing porous stone, replacing perimeter silicone and keeping grout clean are all within reach of a local handyman, and handyman services can cover that between specialist visits.

What to Look Out For in a Tile Repair Quote

Tile quoting goes wrong in one particular way, and it is worth knowing the shape of it. The headline warning sign is a quote that prices the repair without naming the cause. A tiler who will relay your tented floor for a square metre rate and says nothing about movement joints is selling you the same failure again, probably within two summers. Ask directly what the contractor believes caused the problem and what in the quote addresses that cause, not just the damage.

Second, on any wall tiling in a double brick house, ask what happens if the render behind the existing tiles turns out to be drummy. That is a common finding and it carries a real cost at $45 to $95 a square metre, so you want a rate agreed in advance instead of a variation negotiated when the walls are already stripped and you have no room to negotiate. Third, pin down the tile supply question before work starts. Who is sourcing the replacement tiles, what happens if no match can be found, and is harvesting from a concealed area acceptable to you. Arriving to find no matching tile and no plan means the tiler leaves with the floor open and the job unfinished.

Fourth, on anything involving a wet area, ask for the membrane product by name, the standard it is being installed to, and whether a manufacturer warranty will be provided. Waterproofing is not separately licensed in this state, so the documentation is the protection. Ask the same about adhesive and grout, since the wrong adhesive on low-porosity porcelain is a slow-motion failure. Last, on anything in a pre-1990 house, ask what the asbestos plan is before the first tile is lifted, remembering that the homeowner limit for non-friable removal in Western Australia is 10 square metres and that licensed removal requires five days notice to WorkSafe. Where the work is large enough to cross $7,500 get it under a written contract, and keep any deposit at or below 6.5 per cent of the contract price. Flooring beyond tile is flooring services and the broader trade is tiling services.