Old School vs. New School: Inside the Tile Trade with Matt Florio

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Hamptons Project Experience podcast, we sit down with Matt Florio of Florio Tile, a third-generation tile installer who blends old-school craftsmanship with modern materials on high-end projects.

Matt shares how he went from sweeping job sites at age five to running the family business after his father’s illness and passing in 2008, and why starting out during the financial crisis gave him a hunger he thinks is hard to replicate.

Then we get into the technical side of tile:

Waterproofing: cement mud pans vs. foam pans, water-in/water-out systems vs. topside membranes, and why steam showers need a full vapor-proof fabric system
Water testing: what it is, why it matters, and why so many builders skip it
Large-format porcelain slabs: the logistics of moving and setting them, why 90-degree cuts crack, and how they compare in cost to natural stone
Grout and epoxy: how to cut down on the most common tile complaint
What designers and contractors can do better: coordinating drains, framing, and materials before the tile crew arrives
What’s next for tile: why Matt thinks PVC panels are coming, and how a shrinking labor pool is driving the shift

We also talk about the skilled-trades labor shortage, why hands-on experience makes better engineers, and why the stigma around trades needs to change.

Whether you’re a homeowner planning a renovation, a designer, a contractor, or a young person weighing your career options, this conversation is packed with practical insight.

Introduction (0:19)

This is the Hampton’s Project Experience uh podcast with DAR Andrews. I’m happy to have uh Matt Florio from Florio Tile here to uh talk a little bit about his experiences um and his expertise and I’ll let Matt introduce himself.

So, I’m Matt Florio and uh I’ve been doing tile my entire life. Um third generation and I went to college. Um it wasn’t for me. So, I didn’t want to do anything sitting behind a desk for the rest of my life. Um so, I opened up a family tile business. I guess I carried it on and I basically work all ends of the spectrum from low-end to high-end and I basically mix today’s technology with the old school era of methods that are kind of missing today.

Blending Old-School Methods with New Technology (1:03)

So you’re because because of all your experience in three generations, you’re able to basically uh you know the like I guess quote unquote the old school way of doing things, right? And at the same time, you’re I mean, I know from working with you, but you’re diligent enough to be on the latest trends of the technology and um right because some of the new products aren’t so great, you know? So, um but they can be helped with some of the old school methods and materials like cement versus foam. Um they have their place in the market, but sometimes like a foam shower pan is not as good as maybe a cement shower pan, but foam is faster. So, it depends where you are and what the needs are for the site.

Is Modern Waterproofing Better? The Loss of Old-School Craftsmen (1:37)

Well, and then pro probably I’m sure the the waterproofing for today is a lot better than it was 40 years ago.

So, yes and no. You know, um if done correctly, I feel like some of the old school methods are even better. Um the problem is if done correctly is the big one. Like, um old school vinyl pans which were water in water out systems sometimes can be better than our topside waterproofing systems which is what everyone thinks of today as Schlutoter uh Laticrete and all these topside waterproofing systems.

So years ago, I feel like in the trades, they were real craftsmen and they’re real passionate about what they did. And I just ripped out uh four bathrooms in North Haven that were just amazing. I mean, absolutely incredible with the old school system. There was not one ounce of rot anywhere.

Wow.

But the level the level of preparation that these guys took is not the same level of preparation that goes on on a job site today because everybody’s obsessed with how fast can you build something. So those old school methods um I would say are almost gone around here. Uh most of the people have retired. This house was from 25 years ago and a lot of those professionals have retired. There’s not many people replacing them. And with these newer uh materials coming out, a lot of people don’t know how to prep for the old school methods.

Vinyl Pans vs. Topside Waterproofing (2:57)

But there’s a main difference between the uh the waterproofing and these vinyl pans which were water in water out systems. Um, and there’s many positives and negatives, but if you had like a very delicate mosaic you were putting, for example, on a shower floor, they’re not always perfect on a sheet. So, you would take your utility knife and you would slice those sheets on the pan to kind of uh spread them out if they weren’t laid perfect. Now, if you had topside waterproofing, you couldn’t use your knife on there because you’d be cutting through your waterproofing.

Right. Right. Um, many many many years ago if you had like a Roman bath, we’re talking in ancient times, they were set on such basic materials, um, and they worked very, very well with no issues. And then now you have today, you have nothing but issues with your showers. So sometimes a sandy mud mix is better than all these waterproofing um, products because with a waterproofing layer right underneath your tile, nothing can dry from the bottom and it only can dry from the top. So natural stones, you tend to get like a ring of death around the drain because the stone stays saturated and it’s always wet, so it’s not as great. But, you know, there’s there’s pluses and minuses to all of this stuff. If you weren’t using natural stone, you’d never see that dark tile on the waterproofing system. And these waterproofing systems tend to be moldfree systems. The mold is generally on the surface of the tile and not deeply embedded into a mudbed. But that all goes back to did they prep them right? did they not prep them right? You know, right?

Um Sure.

So, it’s an interesting rabbit hole you can go down with all these uh products from old school to new school.

Matt’s Preferred Approach: Mud Pan with Topside Waterproofing (4:36)

So, I just like to I like to use these topside waterproofing products in a lot of instances, but I like to do them with a mud pan rather than a foam pan. But my mud, now that it’s available to me, I’ll put an additive in the mud to make it stronger and more flexible and then put my waterproofing over it. And that’s going to last several lifetimes. And you still get the benefits of the concrete, a hard base, but you got the top side waterproofing.

When water when water hits cement, you don’t hear water droplets. You ever hear water on a steel tub? Doesn’t sound very nice. When you knock on a foam tile wall or foam pan, you hear a totally different sound. When you’re on cement, you don’t hear that same sound. There is a difference. But if you’re a contractor that does one bathroom here and there, now you don’t have to float a mud pan. Now you can slap a foam pan in and you’re done. But again, the foam pan, if it’s a renovation, it needs to be leveled before you put the foam pan in. Now, you’re not saving any time. You know, if but if you don’t have the skill set and that’s your only option, it makes sense. And if you’re in New York City and you have several pans to do, you can just go one after the other and plop these all in. So, there’s there’s ways to fit all of these things uh inside of the spectrum of the job, you know? So, I think each job is going to call for everything specifically. So, um, we’re I’m sure we’re going to go down more of those rabbit holes as we get into it, but I just want to step back a little bit.

Growing Up in a Tile Family (5:50)

Yeah. Um, you mentioned you’ve been doing tile work your entire life. So, how did you get involved in construction and what was your first introduction to construction?

So, you know, somewhat of an earned stereotype of being Italian and everyone in the family doing tile and stone. Uh, my father was one of seven. um five boys, two girls, and the oldest brother did not go into the tile field. Um but the second oldest did and from there down.

Okay.

Um and he had done tile basically his whole entire life. His father was a craftsman. My father’s father was a craftsman and a sculptor from Italy. Um, and then one of the brothers got into tile work full-time and then got every single one of them into tile as well.

Wow.

So, they all did tile at one point. Um, my father actually dropped out of high school, I think, at I don’t even know if it was high school. It might have been 14 years old and just started doing his business full-time.

Um, wow.

Working Job Sites as a Kid (6:53)

And, uh, so for me growing up, my father always pushed us to go to school. I want you to go to school. I don’t want you to be in this business cuz the business and you know it was a whole different side of uh a livelihood. You know, it could be fun to do tile, but uh business-wise, it kind of beats your body up physically and mentally. So, he always wanted us to go to school. Um we did very well in school. I always got a 4.0 in school. School wasn’t that hard. Um I just didn’t enjoy school. That was the problem.

So, at a young age, about 5 years old, I would go to work with my father on the weekends, and just as a helper, just cleaning up garbage, and I was exposed to the job sites well before OSHA came into uh play. And I’m 5 years old, walking up staircases with no railings. Um, nails everywhere. There wasn’t even portagons weren’t really like a thing back then. Like, it was really like a an interesting time for a young kid to be on a job site. But I honestly wish I saw a little more of that today. I don’t see hardly any of that today. And it’s like kind of breaks my heart to see that. Um because I do feel that the trades are a way for people to go in. And I do think that we’re kind of lacking in a lot of those skilled trades.

So, you know, starting at 5 years old, I would just go on weekends here or there just to get out of the house, see what my father did, spend time with my father. And then, um, every summer since 7th grade, I worked full-time, um, with my father on these jobs. And he did tile installation and he also did some bathroom remodels. So, um, basically, you know, I don’t know if I had a choice or if I had to work. I I don’t know what the answer was, but it kept me out of trouble. Um, and it also in another sense made me uh do better in school because I’m like I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life. I’m like I I want to sit behind a desk like my father’s clients and just make a ton of money uh making phone calls all day. You know, I didn’t know I was a young kid. So, it kind of was just like ah if I I go to school and I do really well, I could just make money by not having to do all this work for it. Um, so at a young age it kind of was like ingrained in my mind like the smarter you are the more money you’ll make which is not true really at the end of the day.

The Turning Point: His Father’s Illness (9:08)

So what so what I mean there must have been something that changed that perspect that court life path for you right something that you ended up now in the tile field. So what what was there like a light bulb moment where you’re like it’s not as bad as I thought like what happened that you got kind of thrust into that.

So, I I I went to Binghamton University and um very dreary and depressing uh college. Um so uninterested in in anything I was learning there. Um and then all of a sudden my father got really sick and almost died. He had some routine procedure that went bad. Um and it was just terrible. So he was bedridden for a while. So, and it just happened to happen right at the summer of uh my second year of college, I believe it was. So, then I worked full-time. Um I went from ba basically being a helper to an installer overnight. Um I believe I was 19 at the time.

Um, and from then on, I guess my gearing in my brain changed a little bit, you know, cuz you I never had a plan of being installer. I only had a plan of being a helper, and I was a good helper, but I never really was focused on on installation. So, I kind of took over the business in a sense at 19. My brother was around and he would help me out um when he could, but he had his own business he just started, so it was hard for him to be there. Um, and luckily my father had great relationships with everyone he worked with and uh, seeing me on the job was no problem because they saw me on the job for years. So it was kind of a natural progression. Um, and from that point on things kind of changed when you start being the boss, but I still didn’t really want to do it, you know, but that kind of got me into being an installer every day.

Starting Florio Tile in 2008 (10:54)

Um, what really did it for me is when my father did pass away in 2008. So, it was like a culmination of the market was terrible. It was 08. We had the crash of ’08. Um, I worked for Northwestern Mutual and uh, you know, they sell you under the guise of your like, uh, you know, a financial adviser. You’re an insurance salesman. You’re not a financial adviser. Um, it was terrible. I didn’t like it for me. You know, you’d show up to a place and someone thinks you’re automatically trying to sell them. Um, when I used to show up, I was like a hero and I would save the day and I would fix something or someone would be happy with the work that we did. And I could never get over that feeling of being uh like really unwanted or like I’m really trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes. Like I did not like that industry at all.

So in ’08, I opened up my own tile business called Florio Tile then. And um from there I never went back to to that insurance side of business. You know, it was good though in a sense for the however long I did it. Um they taught you to prospect which was wonderful. Um they teach you a couple good skills there. So it it was a good interjection for the business to find other clients. But it was what a time to start a business in ’08.

Yeah, it was challenging. I’m sure it was the worst.

So, there was no work. I remember competing with someone on Craigslist to regrout a subway tile bathroom in Brooklyn for $400 and it was going to be like two and a half days plus grout. That was where I finally said, “No, I’m not going out there to do this for $400. This is insane.” You know, like this is absolutely nuts. Um, but I took anything and everything. When my father passed away, there was a gap until I started the business and my brother had all of his contacts. So, I was in essence starting over. I would take anything that came my way. I would take repairs. I would take any kind of recommendations. The the family friends I knew, they would recommend me to people. And that’s how I slowly started my business.

How New Waterproofing Products Changed the Trade (13:03)

But when my father passed away, I went from hating the business almost overnight to loving it. I don’t know why. I still kind of can’t explain it. Uh I don’t know if it reminds me of him. I don’t know what it is, but I just love doing tile and I wanted to do nothing but tile. And like around ’08, at the same time, this market is crashing and I’m opening a business in like the worst time in history. Um, you know, I all these other products started becoming popular like Schluter was still kind of new. There was Hydro Ban coming out, a liquid waterproofing, and this whole idea of waterproofing was new. And it kind of changed the game for for tile people because you used to rely on a plumber to waterproof a bathroom. and these these um you know the handicap accessible bathrooms, you had to have a vinyl pan everywhere. They just weren’t really like totally integrated yet. But now with these products, you could literally build a walk-in shower with no curb or a roll-in shower with no curb. And you really became like a builder almost in a sense rather than just a tile guy putting tile over something. So like any before what we did if if it was prepped right, we weren’t functional really. You weren’t really like tile’s cosmetic in a sense in a shower because the system underneath it is what keeps it waterproof. The tile is just pretty in a wear layer, right?

So, I didn’t realize the industry really changed like that with the invent of those new products where that now the waterproofing got pulled into your scope of work as opposed to into somebody, right? And but here’s the other realize that.

Yeah. Well, the and the other side of this though, like if you talk to old school tile guys are still around, and I have a lot of old school tile friends, um, we’re also taking the risk now that a plumber used to take. So, I’m sure this is going to be bad for the whole industry when I say this, but our insurance rates should go up because now we’re on the hook if something leaks rather than the plumber.

Yeah. If a shower leaks, you could do tons of damage.

Lots of damage.

Licensing, Qualifications, and Who’s Responsible for Waterproofing (14:56)

It’s kind of bad that you have like to be a plumber you need here at least in New York you need seven years of W2s you know you’re taking a test and all these other things to be a tile guy you just need your general license that has nothing to do with technical ability and everything to do with legal aspects of contracts and are you allowed to touch plumbing you’re not allowed to touch plumbing so why is a person with this limited qualification allowed to be in charge of waterproofing and that’s my issue.

Well and that’s something to keep in mind that we should mention later too. Like the I guess it’s not just like the the the risk of getting a poor tile installer is that well the shower might not be waterproof.

Right. Right.

Like and it and oh whose scope does that? So it’s really not a matter of like oh the grout line’s not going to be right. M it’s not going to look. It’s really it’s they need to it’s terrible because how educated are these people in their field? Did they just watch a video? Do they really know?

Like I spent a lot of time since 08 going to different um the tile uh you know all of our manufacturers of thin sets and whatnots all the sundries we use in tile. I’ve gone to all of their schools and other classes that they have around here. Schluter has uh wonderful classes that did their level two. They’re amazing. They kind of led me to Ardex, believe it or not. I’m sure they’ll hate to hear that. But uh you know I attended all these things. I read all of these things. I speak with other professionals. Are these other guys doing this? And if they’re not, why are they allowed to be in charge of an eight-b home with living space underneath?

Vetting Installers, Bad Design Choices, and Structural Concerns (16:20)

I get a lot of calls where there’s like I have a following for waterproofing. Um there was a farm we did and there’s a it’s a a completely automated farm and a very expensive control room underneath it. Now, these these lovely architects placed the bathroom above that room when they could have placed it anywhere cuz it’s all being built from brand new.

This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts about the paper world. Like, why would you put bathrooms that a gang of people are going to use over like a multi-million dollar operation? Like, why would you choose this spot?

The plumber brought me in. He’s like, “Matt, we need to waterproof this whole thing.” He’s like, “We can’t have any uh, you know, water dripping down in there.” So, if they called another tile guy, how do you how do you vet them for their uh knowledge and experience, you know? And waterproofing is not simple? I mean, it’s you got crevices, you got to pitch it somewhere. You got to make sure everything’s here. Where do you stop? It’s And what is the structure underneath? Is anyone ever looking? Sometimes a plumber just cuts a beam out, you know? Is it going to deflect? And then your waterproofing is going to I hope somebody’s looking.

I’m a structural engineer. So, the idea that they’re pl That’s like a nightmare. A plumber puts a big hole in a beam. we get a call that says like, “Oh, the floor sagging.” What? And I’m like, “Did we misdesign some? Did something happen?” And you get there and you’re like, “Oh, no. It was a construction issue.” You’re like, “Okay, we’ll put it back to the way the plan said.” But, um, no, it’s never a design issue. The houses are being designed better than they’ve ever been designed in years.

You know, people can can argue that all they want, but when you really talk to someone smart, like old school tradesman I’m talking, they’ll they’ll tell you that like we relied on the brute strength of of the materials holding things together, then maybe they shouldn’t have like or you know, old school lumber, but these all of these TGI beams and all these things, they’re not meant to be sawed out and these people are just cutting them. Um, and if the designer wants to put a niche in the way of a loadbearing beam, I can’t tell you how many times I have seen even out here people cut these things out. And I say, “Hey, why are you doing this?” And they say, “Well, they want the niche here.”

Well, and honestly, I love the workforce because I’m a I’m a big supporter of our workforce here. I think they’re great and they’re the best. But, you know, you have certain people everywhere that just don’t care. And if you’re moving out of here in 5 years, do you really care or you just want to get your money and move on? Some of that happens more often than you think. And it’s sad to see that. There’s there’s always going to be people that care and don’t care. Um, but today, like I know in in my generation when I was a young kid, all these people were like pretty uh pretty invested and they had a lot of pride. There’s still people with pride out there. It’s just not as much.

Having Pride in Your Work (19:08)

Well, and so we went kind of went ahead there, but I want to circle back a little bit. Um, and I I would agree with you. You need, you know, I think one of the things that leads to success in anything you do, and we have a responsibility is to have pride in the work you do. Show up and do the best you can on that day, given the situation you have, whether you got no sleep last night.

Yes.

Whatever it is, you know, life life happens, right? We’re but we’re how we show up in the day given all those things going on is what what sets, you know, someone like yourself apart from other people in my opinion, right?

The Entrepreneurial Mindset (19:41)

Um but um before I want to go back. So I know we talked about you having a big change and that’s how you know end up in the tile industry and then you found that passion for it. Um I mean that must have been a pretty dramatic change from working as an employee for someone right to all of a sudden starting a business handling the business side of things estimating doing all and was there a time when you were younger where you you embodied the mindset of an entrepreneur? Where did you learn that skill? What like prepared you to be able to just do that? Is it was it something you kind of just always knew you’d do or

I don’t know. You know, I just uh you know, I just always wanted so much. I just have an insatiable appetite for for everything. And I just could never I’m I’m not a type of guy that can have a glass ceiling. Like I just want to have the be I just want to be able to do as much as I want. And I really can’t do that working for somebody else. Um, and I I guess I always had an interest in like entrepreneurial stuff. When I was asked as a young kid, um, you know, when you’re a young child in elementary school, everyone would ask, “What do you want to be? A fireman? You want to be a cop or whatever?” My answer is always rich. Like, okay, like, “What do you want to be?” I said, “I want to be rich.” Cuz I grew up seeing all these rich people and they had wonderful lives, you know? I’m sure some of them are miserable, but honestly, some of these customers are really cool growing up. And they ask me, “I want to be rich. How you want to be rich?” I’m like, “I don’t care.” Like, whatever it took. That was always my answer.

So like I never wanted to just go do a 9 to 5 somewhere. It was never going to make me happy. But I can see how it can make others happy and I don’t knock them for it because the quality of life at the end of the day they probably have a better quality of life. Um I can’t tell you how many birthdays, holidays, um nights, weekends time that I miss for this. The sacrifice is insane and I don’t know if it’s worth it. um I am enjoying myself but I don’t really always know if it’s worth it for the family and friends around me. It’s definitely an interesting thing, but the entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t know if you can replicate it or not, but you know, I had a hunger going through also when I was young like uh when I was in about fifth grade, my father got sick also again. And we went from in the 80s, my father killed it. He made it way too much money for a guy that didn’t even finish high school. He did fantastic. The recession hit and got sick at the same time. So like we went from living high to living low like almost overnight.

Being Hungry, Reputation, and Word-of-Mouth (22:00)

So being hungry I feel like is something something so valuable. I feel so bad for people that were starting a business anywhere between 2015 on because there’s so much work to start a business in ’08 when there’s no work. There’s a hunger that is in you that is not going to be in these other people because they have I know some people that started businesses in this time they’re like ah don’t worry I’ll get the next job or I’m not calling this guy back or I call back repairs. I don’t generally do them now because I don’t have a lot of time but I call them back. I go on everything. I don’t say no to people. I don’t have a mindset that there’s going to be work tomorrow. I have a mindset like this could be my last job and I better go on it and I better entertain them. And whoever recommends me to something, it is my duty to call that customer back so that I don’t make whoever recommended me to them look bad. That’s gone today. I have recommended plenty of people that made me look bad and it’s it’s disheartening. I thought that they would have a little respect for the recommendation, but it’s kind of like today’s market and everyone’s just like, “Ah, I’ll get another job. I’ll get another job.”

A recession is good because it resets everyone’s mindset. But like being hungry, being hungry is what uh I feel like really sets me apart from most people. And I don’t know if I would have if all these life events didn’t happen to me. And uh if I didn’t start a business in ’08, I don’t know if I’d be as driven if I was today. Like I’ll get the next one. I’ll get the next one. But uh people just don’t understand. You get paid in two ways. You get paid at the end of your job with money and you get paid with a recommendation if you did a nice job. That’s how you get paid. I don’t advertise. That is it. Almost everything I have done has been from someone else or someone else telling me about someone else and just keeping, you know, what I think should be natural. You should just take care of the people that take care of you. And if you got recommended, it’s your duty to make them look right and don’t make them, you know, look like a jerk for recommending a guy that doesn’t call him back.

Advice for Young People: Mirror Success and Get Paid to Learn (24:08)

Yeah. So, you covered earlier we mentioned having pride in your work.

Mhm.

Now, um it seems like you know obviously if you want to be successful in a career, you got to have drive and purpose and and responsibility to be responsible. What other characteristics do you think um that you have that led you to be successful? And also that um for young people kind of curious as to how could I be successful or maybe that kid that’s sitting there and like well I want to be successful and have you know have a house do this or you know more so than a you know doesn’t might not know the specific career but wants to be successful in whatever they choose. What other characteristics and things from your experience do you think are valuable that that they kids should look to embody to mirror in other people or to apply to what they’re doing?

Well, I think that like for the younger generation, I think they should look at someone they want to be and like you said, mirror them. Um, so if you, for example, if if there’s some kind of crazy CEO that you really like, ask to work for them for free. Do you know how far that goes today? Everyone I talk to is all about the dollar and the money, right? It’s great to make money. If some kid came to me and they’re like, “Hey, Matt, I want to own my own tile business one day.” Now, most people would be turned off right now. Like, I’m not hiring a guy that wants to open up his own business. And they’re like, “I want to learn everything you have to teach me. I want to learn everything you can I can from you, and I’m willing to work for free.” No one’s ever going to do that, okay? But if they did, the door would go wide open. I’m sure that would apply anywhere.

Now, for me, if someone just said, “I wanted to learn. I don’t care if you’re going to open up your own business. You’re not going to match my passion most likely.” But even if you did, there’s a scarcity mentality. Um, which is terrible. And then you have this other mentality like there’s enough work for everybody if you’re good. So, I would just love to have somebody that’s just willing to put in the effort. So, if you’re a young person, I strongly suggest potentially working with your hands if that’s something that you’re into because I read a statistic that one out of every seven people um or every seven people that retire in the trades industry, only one replaces them. If that is the case, there is plenty of work for the rest of our life. Um at least my life for sure.

Wow.

But I could kind of see it on the job site and I see the tile companies, the high-end high-end tile companies going down. And I see a lot of there’s just there’s a shortage of labor. Like it’s just a really bad shortage of labor. And I think you could either go to college and pay to learn or you could come to a company, no matter which company it is, and you can get paid to learn. So why not get paid to learn?

Why Trade Experience Makes Better Engineers (26:46)

Well, and and one of the things that we see, you know, uh maybe it’s a little a little different is like we’re when when we’re hiring with at Dandra Andrews, we’re looking for people that have a college degree, right? But out of all, you know, the the the people we hire that make the best engineers are the ones that worked in the trades or in a field. And the reason is they’ve seen it, right? So it’s not just a a visual draw. They can visual they can visualize it because they have experience in framing, carpent, whatever it might be. So if if I would just echo that that, you know, if it’s I mean even if you don’t ever intend on doing any of this work yourself, at some point hopefully you’d own a house or be in a building, right? It’d be great to know about it.

But like you said, that’s a good point. Like if you’re waiting till you’re 22 years old to be like, “Oh, I want to learn to do work with my hands now.”

Yeah.

You know, you’ve missed the boat when when you’re talking to someone like yourself, you’re like, “Oh, I was 5 years old on a job site.” Whether it’s just cleaning and shoveling or just looking around or and then you’re 14, 15, 16. Um I don’t think we have a lot of 16, 17 year olds working in the trades in the summertime and and they could be learning a tremendous amount. They could be learning so much because you don’t just learn about the trade, you learn about life, you learn about business, you see the hardships of people and you see the hardships of people, but yet they keep going. Like the only tradesmen I’ve come across in my life that like have like a bad disc in their back and they go to work and they work hard every day and they work past all that pain because they have a family to take care of. There’s real sacrifice. I mean, these people are wonderful people to embody, um, you know, to a certain point, but for a young person that could be in the trades, do well in school, and like you said, become an engineer, you’re going to be one up on most of your classmates. I can already guarantee it, you know, cuz you’ve had experience, right, with your father.

Yeah, I worked with my Ocean Electric, my dad. And that for me, like I I was able to learn quickly, you know, but even besides that, you know, when I was uh at one of my first engineering uh companies I worked with, you know, I I was able to uh um you know, I bought a short sale like a in I was up in an area that was less expensive than out here. Um but like I was able to buy a house that I started working on fixing up like you could so you know, I wasn’t in the market for a turnkey house. I was like, “Oh, this place is a dump.” Like, “Well, I can live there and fix it up.” you know, or that’s cool. In college, you know, we lived in a house of college. Need to fix the light bulbs, do different like it just being able to do things with your hands. It only opens doors.

And from my experience, right, with life, it doesn’t mean that, oh, I learned to be a a carpenter, a plumber, electrician, a tradesman, a whatever it is, that doesn’t mean that that’s the only thing you’re ever going to do.

That’s right. And it’s great experience to have. It’s wonderful ex like uh life experience and so many different assets. And you know, like you said, to learn this stuff, you don’t have to do it for the rest of your life, but maybe you do this until you go to college. And then in college, you become that superstar engineer or superstar architect. And maybe you’re the engineer and now you’re like, “Oh man, the bathroom’s right here, and it’s so close to where the shower drain will be. Maybe I can redesign this so that I I can maybe avoid in the field a plumber cutting this out because I know he’s going to want to.”

So, and that’s something we we try I mean on our end we try to do because we do structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, we try to coordinate all that with the architecture and everything, but that doesn’t happen on all the projects.

Mhm.

Respecting the Trades and Rethinking Sports vs. Skills (29:58)

Um but also, you know, I think like um you can you can have an outstanding quality of life, right, and and and not go to college and go into a trade or it there’s different I mean I think um you know you you speak very highly of the people you work with and the trades people and I I can’t I I think that’s something that maybe as a society we need to be more appreciative of.

Um, yeah, it’s I think I I I think you hit the nail on the head in that working, you know, be when you’re young, you have plenty of energy. You need something to do. Go work for someone that you could learn something. Trouble. I look, you know, if sports aren’t your thing, like, yeah, we all have to play sports sometimes, but like, you know, sports all wonderful. Um, I just think too many kids today are all about sports, sports, sports, sports, sports. if some of these kids were into a trade, um you could get that physical activity and learn a good quality um set of skills that man when you come out of that when you come out of whatever you end up doing, you’re going to be further ahead than most people.

I know you can get scholarships uh with sports and it’s good for college and all that stuff, you know. Um I just think that this society has pushed away the trades and we’ve kind of hurt ourselves a bit. um we have foreign labor helping us out. Um not all the foreign labor is as educated. Um and the communication gap and all these other things like when when you come on a job site and you’re uh there because you want to be not because you have to be because you have no other option. But if you’re there because you want to be there, then um I think you’re automatically going to do better than most people. And I think you’re automatically going to be more successful and doors open for people that want them to be open. So if you happen to know the owner of a business and you work for him directly, you might learn things you didn’t learn about business um and about pricing. So for young people, I I think it’s it’s a wonderful opportunity and I know they would be welcomed into the trade 100%. Because we say, “Oh man, we got a we got a young guy. He’s really energetic and he’s hustling and he wants to learn.” I mean, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Like, you can’t find them anywhere.

Phones and Problem-Solving Skills (32:11)

You know, I’m 42 years old, but maybe I’m getting old. I don’t know what it is, you know, on the job site, but I think these phones were terrible for everybody. When I started out and my father was sick and I’m on a job site in the middle of the Hamptons, I have no cell service and cell phones really weren’t a thing. You had to use your brain and figure out the answer. Like, there was no let me hop on YouTube and get the quick answer. like the the problem solving skills today are less like people don’t really these young people don’t have them. They just they hurry up, they hop online, they figure it out and whatever part of the brain it takes to figure out the problem they’re lacking.

What Contractors and Designers Should Know (32:50)

You know, I I had a few things in my mind that I know we’ve talked about previously, but um let’s maybe let’s just start with like what are some things that you wish um uh a combination of both contractors knew and/or architects and designers knew that would help set you guys up for success?

Is there certain things that I wish they just had a little bit more background on the materials and not just the finished materials of the tiles but also like the uh the setting materials and these waterproofing materials. I wish they they would attend these simple classes like just attending these classes they would get a wealth of knowledge. Um, so like contractors all of a sudden a designer or customer wants a nice linear drain. Where are we roughing this linear drain in? Is it going up against the wall or is there a problem and it’s got to go 2 ft from the wall? Can I put that pipe in the center or do I need a linear drain with an offset uh drain spout coming off of it? Like a lot of these contractors are businessmen, right? They don’t really know. Um, and designers, they’re wonderful, but they don’t all have, like we discussed earlier, like that that physical background in the field. They just want to put it there and you make it work is my experience a lot of the time.

And that should be their only job if you think about it. Like they’re there to design, you know? Um, so that’s where the contractor should kind of have a little uh synergistic effect with their designer when they come up with these plans.

Mhm.

So, I think like if a contractor and designer attended some of these classes and maybe learned a little bit about these products, um they’d have a lot better time putting together these bathrooms or kitchens or other kinds of flooring projects. I mean, it depends on how detailed you want to get, you know, on construction with tile and you have exterior systems. Um I find that a lot of my my expertise isn’t just straight doing what I’m doing. I’m finding that my expertise comes in trying to figure out how to do what they want to do because it’s not recommended. So, I’m trying to manipulate all the products that are at my disposal, all the new products and the old school products. I’m trying to figure out what mix of those can I use to manipulate this situation to get this to work properly without an issue. Like, it’s never so cut and dry. I’m always trying to be like a detective and put this puzzle together, you know, and they don’t care. No one cares. get it to work. That’s all I care about. I’m like, what if you had another guy here? What would they be doing? I don’t care, you know.

Fiberglass Shower Pans and Leak Failures (35:25)

And it’s like, you know, oh, I only like to do fiberglass pans. Most of the fiberglass shower pans I see leak. Like the instead of a vinyl pan, like I remember our house, six out of eight pans leaked. I didn’t even want to water test them. My brother, who, you know, is in a very similar industry as a slab shop out here, it was a project with him. He’s like, “Matt, test the pans. I’m telling you, test them.” So, I did. Six out of eight leaked immediately.

And was that a new house?

It was a brand new house. So you’re telling me brand new house, high-end construction, six out of eight shower pans in 15 minutes gone.

I mean, and but if you looked at it, looked like one solid piece.

I can’t believe it. And you’re putting these fiberglass pans over framing material. Right now, what happens when you frame a house? Does it ever rain? It rains, right? They’re full of water. And what happens when we start going on the inside and these things dry out and everything shrinks? What happens to the things that are connected to studs like these these fiberglass pans that are connected to studs and now everything shrinks? You think they have a crack? Yeah, of course they do.

And then you have like, you know, with these contractors, back to this contractor designer thing. Sometimes you hire a contractor that just has way too many employees and not enough oversight. I feel like there’s like like when it comes to high-end residential, you can’t really grow too too big because you lose control.

Steam Showers and Vapor Proofing (36:36)

I remember being on one specific builder that I don’t enjoy out here anymore, and I won’t name them. Um, large plumbing company. They decide they want to set up for a steam shower. Like, we don’t know if we want to do steam, but we want to set it up for steam, so I want to run the pipe now in the wall. Said, okay, but if you’re doing steam, then you have to prep these studs for the steam. We need to put a plastic vapor barrier down before we do this or we need to do a full um fabric system like Ardex makes a TLT700 or Schluter makes Kerdi DS for a steam shower, right? So, we need to do one of those, but they’re like, “Oh, no.”

So, I just want to back up for not to interrupt you, I apologize, Matt, but so for people listening that might not be aware, right? Like the the criteria there, and correct me if I’m wrong, but when it’s a normal shower, normal bathroom, you just waterproof the shower pan. may and up the walls a certain amount if not the whole walls.

Yep.

Now, because you’re adding a steam unit that’s pumping steam into the shower, turning it into almost into a little bit of a sauna, you need to waterproof that entire bathroom.

You need to vapor proof it.

Vapor proof it. Okay.

Not even waterproof. So, I had a I had a guy that was a a fireman that did this on the side. He used glue in a steam shower. My friend, I have a friend that’s a firefighter and he hired a firefighter buddy to do the tile and I saw the glue there and I was like, “Hey buddy, you better take that off before it falls on your customer’s head. You can’t put glue in a steam shower.”

Right. Cuz it the humidity doesn’t adhere and you have tiles falling.

Yeah.

Water In/Water Out Systems Explained (38:07)

So So they did these vinyl I mean these fiberglass pans which is a water in water out system. These fiberglass pans they did this on one job I was on. We were waiting forever for this job. We’re waiting for them. They ordered the wrong linear drain. Back to the designer and contractor nightmare. They ordered the wrong linear drain because they don’t know the difference between topside waterproofing and water in water out systems like these fiberglass pans. They don’t know. The designer just picks a drain.

Can you just explain that to everyone?

So So So water in water out systems are your traditional systems that you see all the time. Like you’ve seen showers um with a round drain typically these old showers, right? And they’re tiled. The top of them is tiled. So um years ago there is a vinyl liner that went in underneath the mudbed. So you would have a vinyl liner basically um that would catch the water that would go into the wall system and the floor system and then it would go um it would leech through the mud pan to the vinyl liner and down to weepholes. So the old school showers and even some of these new ones, right, with these water in water out systems, you have a drain. Now most people see a drain on the shower and they don’t know that there’s a liner underneath. So, where the tile is cut around the drain, you’d say you have like 80% of that water or 90% of that water goes on top of the surface of the tile into that drain that you see. But water migrates through the grout joints and through the wall system down into the vinyl pan or fiberglass pan. It hits that layer of waterproofing which is the vinyl or the fiberglass and then it leeches towards this clamping ring drain. Now what you don’t see is where that drain is screwed into the floor there’s weep holes around that. So whatever water hits the vinyl or the fiberglass is supposed to go into those weepholes and that’s how those systems work. So there so that’s where you get the term water in water out. So water goes in and water comes out.

I don’t know how many plumbers or tile people or different people have seen the detail of a proper water in water out system and and I’m certain it’s certainly if it’s if if on the um maybe the general contractors have the architects have designers you may but it’s not getting shown to a 20-year-old guy that shows up to go work on the job site as a laborer or to when you see it in my mind I can see it cuz I’ve looked at it previously but I I I got to find it but you can follow the path of of the water.

Yeah.

And you say, “Oh, yeah. The water’s going to hit here. It’s got to go here. It’s got” And then there’s a nice linear flow that should be achieved in the field. And if you think about it that way,

Mhm.

Now, when you’re looking at, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” Yeah. No wonder we have an issue here. But, right, without that education, there’s not and there’s not like

Owner Oversight and Job Site Mistakes (40:43)

And where’s the owner? Where’s that business owner? Is he just sending his guys out that day? You know how many friends from college tell me, “Matt, why are you doing the work? Just hire guys to do it.” I’m like, “I wish it was.” How ignorant of an answer is that? How do you tell somebody just hire guys to do it? Like, oh yeah, I forgot every guy is educated and knows how to work in a custom house.

They’re trying to take 25 years of your experience and you can’t. Yes, you could teach people and do that, but there’s a value to what you’ve learned and done and and and like you said, we’re talking about a guy with a drill and some screws and he just boom. There’s I mean any job site on the in the east end anywhere you can grab screws and a screw gun like that’s no at any given point any given point somebody could put a screw somewhere and it and it clearly like visualizing it like it’s unor uncommon and not normal to see a piece of cement board that isn’t screwed on the edges and up each of the studs. So, you see that and it’s a harmless thing. Like, somebody even could be meaning to do the best and putting their best for it and having pride in that where they they put the screws in and they’re like, “Yeah, I was cleaning up. I noticed they hadn’t screwed it in all the way. I took care of that. I did a good job today.” And it’s actually it just set the project.

Set the And that’s just what happened to me on that builder I was telling with the steam shower. The own plumbers’s guy, they come and they’re playing soccer in the field. I’m like, I’m waiting for this guy to hurry up and finish so I can get back into doing what I want to do. They’re playing soccer. He comes to drill a hole for the steam shower. So, put a steam pipe through, which nothing’s prepped for steam. I don’t know why you’d put a steam pipe in there. And I’m like, “Hey, you can’t make the shower a steam shower because it’s not prepped for steam. No one cares.” The guy puts a hole through the shower pan, the fiberglass shower pan that his company did. And this pan was leaking. So, they had to fix this leaking pan. Then they send this kid after we finally get everything. It passes a water test. They send the kid here to put in the steam pipe. He drills through the floor, drills through the pan, and now we have another hole in the same pan that held us up for I don’t know how long already. So, this happens more than I’d like to say it happens.

Water Testing a Shower Pan (42:53)

So, I just want to mention a detail there that I think a lot of people would would miss.

Yeah.

And that and maybe you could talk through that. You water tested the shower pan, right? So now, is that something that the tile guy would do or the plumber needs to do or the general contractor or is it some like

In my opinion, everyone that’s part of that bathroom should do it. Does it happen? It never happens. And some of these builders and project managers don’t care. Um, they just don’t care. They’re turning out numbers and the pride isn’t there. And I have so many builders in my mind and I can’t say their names. I’ll totally get sued sideways. But

No, but so so let’s talk let’s let’s take it to a minute. Talk to that process. What what does that mean when you tell someone you need to like for a home someone that’s building a new house, a homeowner and

And a lot of guys don’t do it. So, I have a lot of tile guys that put these foam pans and look some of these tile guys are older and look, we’re here to make money at the end of the day. This isn’t a charity. We enjoy what we do, but we’re not a charity. We’re here in business for profit and they’ve done a lot of these foam Schluter pans and they’ve never had an issue, right? And they don’t water test them. They put them in, they do that and boom. And I gotta tell you, personally, in my whole life, I’ve probably had two or three water tests that failed on me. There none that I did personally, but my guys did them and I wasn’t there to check on it. But you know what? I caught it. And that’s why, you know, and it’s embarrassing, but I’m human. But I water test for a reason. So that I don’t do this with a $700,000 painting underneath me and water’s dripping on it. So we water test.

So now who here it becomes who really should water test? Right, back to your question and and also what what for someone that is unfamiliar with this completely? What is a water test?

The water test is where you plug the drain, you fill the shower up to a certain level, you mark the wall and you let it sit for 24 to 48 hours. You let that water sit and you monitor that water level. It should be at the same exact mark you have on the wall. If it is a little bit below, I don’t think evaporation is going to make something go a little bit below. Sometimes it could soak up a cement board wall if you have cement board in there. Um, depending on what type of water test you’re performing, but the water test should be done right before you install tile.

Topside Waterproofing: Fabric Systems and Perm Ratings (45:04)

I just want to tie people back in.

Mhm.

Um, so now when we’re talking about like an Ardex system, a Schluter system, the foam pans, the waterproofing membrane, lapping the seams, those are all topside waterproofing system.

Topside that. So now we’re in the topside waterproofing system category.

Um, and so with that, um, so in because of that, how is how does that change what you guys do when you’re doing a topside waterproofing? What is your process and what would you recommend? So what I if somebody’s looking to specify something on a drawing or purchase it for their own house or make sure their tile contractor or plumber, whoever is doing the right job, what would in your opinion be the right?

In my opinion, if you’re doing a steam shower, a full fabric system is the only way you can go unless you’re doing the water in water out system. So if you’re doing a topside waterproofing system, a full fabric system, meaning like a full uh Kerdi DS, which is a thicker version of Kerdi or Ardex makes TLT700. I bought out they discontinued SK175. It has the highest perm rating of all of the waterproofing out there. So, I did the Ardex guys personal house and I said, “I want all of your waterproofing.” I did a little Parks and Rec uh thing there. It’s a TV show where they’re like, “I want all of the product you’ve ever made.” And I bought it all. I think I spent 15 or 20 grand on all of the waterproofing they had left because it had the highest perm rating.

The thing I just want to back up for a second for people that may have missed that. So, Ardex, who makes waterproofing, shower, and tile products.

Yep.

You tiled. They trusted you to tile and waterproof their house. I just want to make sure that people didn’t miss glass over that because I think that speaks to your credibility and your expertise that

Yeah.

This guy deals with a lot of tile people sells all the product and they chose they chose

And you got home office in Pennsylvania and I have quite a reputation there because I listen I don’t let anyone slide. No one lets me slide, right? So I don’t let them slide too and if they’re doing something bad I call them out on it. I’m pretty vocal with them about it. And it’s not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it’s just trying to make something better for everybody else and for them too, you know. So, I don’t let them get away with anything. Um, as no one should let me get away with anything either, right? So, we all got to hold ourselves to a standard. So, yeah, they kind of know me to be a little crazy.

Um, the only thing that gives these fabrics a perm rating in all these fabrics, and by the way, no one makes their own fabric. There’s like a company that’s unnamed that makes fabrics for everyone else to a certain spec, right? There’s all there’s a hand less than a handful of these companies across the world that make this stuff for people. Now, each company is in charge of the spec they want. So, what makes these fabrics waterproof is the thickness of plastic in between them. So, if you were to cut these things open, there’s a layer of plastic in there. The thicker the plastic, the higher the perm rating. So, the thinner the plastic, the easier it is to fold it into corners, right? So you get a nice square corner when you’re doing a shower, which is so important because if I’m tiling a shower floor and there’s a big round uh fabric fold in the corner, I can’t get that that tile really close to the edge of the wall and I risk not getting uh the wall tile when I put the wall down. It may not cover over that large gap of that roll in the corner. So the thicker the perm rating or the better the perm rating, the harder it is to conform to these corners, but the better it is for your shower. Um, the thinner it is, the worse it is for your shower, but the easier it is for the for the installer. So, there’s tradeoffs, right, with all this other stuff. I refuse to use the thin stuff, I won’t. And when I heard they were discontinuing this one, I bought all of it.

But the difference of their new stuff to the old stuff is 0.01 difference. So, like their perm rating is 0.05 currently. The stuff I bought is 0.04. Regular Kerdi is 0.5. So you’re talking 10 times difference.

10 times different.

So Schluter makes Kerdi DS. So it’s great for water, right? But it’s not great for steam. So Schluter is a wonderful just just as a comparison. I think honestly I think all these companies are great if you install them properly. It’s just that big question install them properly.

Sealing Seams: Liquids, Capillary Action, and Belt-and-Suspenders (49:03)

I just go one step ahead. Now based on a lot of videos and other other things I’ve seen online. So because of the capillary action of water and cements, I like to hit all the seams with liquid, but not just any liquid.

So people like, so for um we, you know, architects, they should be if they’re doing a a fabric, right? And the fabric seams need to be overlapped 2 in and put together, but they should also be calling for the the tile contractors and or the GC, whoever it is, to put a liquid um like Ardex 8+9 over the seams.

Yep. So, Ardex makes 8+9. Laticrete um has their own version as well. And this stops all of that capillary action from happening. And there’s a very simple video from from Tile Coach, not to pump this guy because some of the things are good and some of them are bad. And it shows you physically shows you what happens when they’re submerged for so long. And not every liquid can be submerged, right? So, now everyone’s really confused. Now, everyone’s probably lost everybody, right? Um because not all these liquids are rated to be submerged. They’re for the wall and they don’t want them on the floor of a shower.

Okay.

But like the best system that you’ll ever see, um, but I don’t do it for a reason, is a complete liquid system. There’s no seams. There’s no nothing. There’s no overlaps. There’s no nothing. A complete painted liquid seam.

And would that be like a Hydro Ban?

Hydro Ban. So like if you did a complete Hydro Ban system with no seams whatsoever and just painted everything, it would hold water forever. I mean, it’s amazing. But here’s the thing, right? We don’t live in cement homes. And even cement homes can change in size. They just do it way slower than wood. The thing is, we live in wood framed homes, right, which are constantly expanding and contracting. I wouldn’t do a solid liquid um uh shower system because I like the flexibility of the fabric in the corners. The fabric can move. It’s stretchy. Some of Ardex’s original fabric, which I’ve saved from my own house, because again, they don’t make it anymore, is so I could take this fabric and stretch it so much, and it’s not going to leak. It’s not going to break. The new stuff is a little rigid. It’s probably cheaper to make like everyone else is doing because we’re all in business to make money.

Now, oh, go ahead.

So, I I just think that liquid is a wonderful thing. Like, if you see these tests, liquids hold up, but the addition of the fabric in these change of planes. So, when I do a waterproofing system, I always use that heavy duty fabric on the pan and I lap it up the walls at least four to six inches always. Then I take seam tape on all of the board seams and put that seam tape on all of those seams. I fill in the screw holes and then when I’m done, I paint all of the walls in a liquid and when it comes to the floor, I use a heavier duty liquid called 8+9 on all of those seams and corner pieces. I also use a lot of pre-made inside and outside corner pieces, which tend to bump us out. It’s kind of bad in the field, but it bumps out the corners a little bit. Um, so a lot of guys don’t like to use it, but I like the pre-made inside and outside corner because there’s no way when I make my pan and put my pan over the floor and I cut that corner out, if I have a pre-made inside corner underneath there, and then I have a pan that’s just cut right at the corner and goes up, there’s no way water is going behind the fabric, traveling down the corner piece, and then behind the corner piece. It’s not happening. And then just without liquid, right? Then I put liquid over it. There’s no way in any world that this is ever going to leak ever.

Now, other guys, they slap a foam pan in with rapid set, they put in their corner pieces of regular thin set, and they tile that floor the same day because that’s how you make money.

Well, there’s no way they’re doing a water test if they’re tile.

Do a water test. I have so many guys like, I don’t I haven’t all my career, I’ve had one leak, so you know what, that’s pretty good odds for me. If one leaks, I’ll just go back and fix it. I understand the mentality. I do. It’s just that reputation of that one leak, you know, like I wouldn’t want it to be of negligence, you know?

Cost of Waterproofing and Doubling Up on Protection (53:03)

I mean, I think I don’t know. I mean, I’m an engineer, so I’m over the top, but I’m like, well, you could do a fabric. You might as well just paint over it with some other stuff. And now you’re you’re double protection. You’re in good. But I could, you know, there’s, like you said, there’s the other side of that, which is cost. I’m sure the 8+9 isn’t cheap. The Schluter is not cheap.

Look, a bucket of like I, you know, you’re going to pay $275 to $300 for a commercial unit. If you mix it in little bits, it lasts you a very long time. And if you really want to go crazy, you could do a belt and suspender system. So what that means is I can install because it’s a cementitious liquid, I can install these fabrics with 8+9 and then paint over them. So now I’m installing waterproofing with waterproofing. So if I was doing a swimming pool in a residential area with living space underneath it, that’s how I’m installing it. The one downside is 8+9 um or any of these cementitious liquids, they don’t really bite as well as a regular thin set bites. Meaning like if I am to troweling these fabrics, fabric over fabric, they they don’t really get the air pockets out very well and it’s kind of a loose liquid. You could make it thicker, but it doesn’t it doesn’t really bite as well as say a thin set bites. Like thin set is sticky. It has memory. Um it’s not the same thickness. And I’ve done it where I wasn’t really happy and when it was all said and dried, I had to do it again because I didn’t think it was going to hold because just the user the usability of it wasn’t really there.

So, I like to install it with a premium thin set and then paint over everything. That’s what I would prefer to do. But if I was doing something so technical where there was going to be a a computer room underneath it, I would do it that way and I would just take my time and I would just take my time to work out all the bubbles. And then the next day I would go in and inspect it and any bubbles that might have happened, I would cut them out, patch them, and go over them again. Um, but you know, you’re not going to ever have a leak. And the cost really isn’t killing you at the end of the day. It really isn’t. It’s just the amount of time it takes. So, it’s really these products can tend to be expensive, but if you’re doing a lot of them and you buy large rolls of fabric, um commercialized buckets of waterproofing, which is only a three gallon bucket and a bag of powder, I mean, we’re not talking large investment here. So, when anyone tries to give me like it costs too much, I’m just like, come on. You know, it really doesn’t cost too much.

Corner Pieces and Niches (55:13)

The thing that surprises me is the one supplier I buy a lot of corner pieces from, he’s like, you’re the only guy that buys corner pieces. I’m like, are you kidding me? Like, why was Are we serious here?

Yeah.

Like, yeah, they just cut them and fold them and that’s it. And I’m like, that’s really not waterproof, but okay. But that’s what’s out there.

Well, plus you’re making a huge a huge clump of material then like that you have to tile over. So, how do you keep like to the radius you were talking about like now you’re in a corner and you have multiple layers folded over each other that like how does that cover? What does that look like at the end of the day?

I know. I just I’m just like this is wild to me. Like so. You need outside corners. You need inside corners. When I So when I do a niche, I do four inside corners, four outside corners, and I do tape along the four sides of a recess niche. My niche is 100% waterproofed. Everybody online, Kerdi makes Kerdi-Fix, all these like Wedi makes Wedi sealant, Hydro Ban has a Hydro Ban sealant, all these sealants, and these guys just simply, it’s not caulk, but we call it caulk, but it comes out of a tube and they just simply caulk all the stuff together and they call it a day. And I’m like, how many times have you seen stuff separate on a job site? It separates over time. Like, is that what you want to use to keep yourself watertight? I don’t like it.

No.

Shortcuts in the Field: Sealant, Silicone, and Foam (56:26)

But a lot of these contractors, especially in the middle of the island, that’s what they’re doing, you know? And if they can’t get the foam wall board, they just silicone a piece of I’ve seen guys silicone cement board to a foam base. And I’m like, guys, you can’t you can’t do this. Like, this isn’t to the top of the foam base, right? Just the top of the foam base.

Now, here’s the problem. What was the point of that? because they couldn’t get uh wall board. So that is silicone cement board to the top of a a waterproof foam pan.

Based it. I got you. Instead of overlapping it with tape or doing any tape or any of the because technically to do these foam systems, you would put in a foam shower pan and then you would use this caulk tube or their sealant tube and you would just literally just put a bead of sealant between the pan and the wall and that’s what you’re relying on to be waterproof. Who in their right mind thinks that’s okay? And people do it all the time. I just watched this guy online use a solid piece of foam for a pony wall. And he thinks he’s God’s gift. He puts sealant underneath a pony wall on the floor and where it attaches to the wall and then uses seam tape and that’s all holding everything together. And I’m like, “Okay.” Um, have you ever seen foam rip? Like it’s just like when it rips off cement board. It’ll rip to the first like eighth of an inch of foam and the whole thing falls off. like this is what people are doing now with all these new products. It’s so unregulated. It’s really just like the wild west.

Regulation, Accountability, and Education (57:46)

Like I don’t know how I don’t know how it’s allowed. And honestly, I think that the problems are bigger than the contractor, architect, engineer, designer. The problem’s bigger than that. There’s no regulation from the state on what products you’re allowed to use and who’s allowed to put them in. Why is this allowed? Why is a contractor allowed to build a home if he is really just a businessman at the end of the day? So, it’s it’s I think it’s an industrywide thing, but um and I think it’s just a matter of education, you know, like spreading the word, educating people, and and holding holding everyone else each other accountable, right? And I and I just feel like half these contractors shouldn’t be building. They shouldn’t be like half the like these guys that I deal with, they shouldn’t be building. They don’t have a care in the world and they kind of just push it off to the next guy. And it’s like like don’t you see this is wrong? Like, how are you letting this How are you letting these things cross in Why is this outlet so close to here?

It’s like, oh, you didn’t get a permit. Okay.

Retrofits: Floor Registers and Not Cutting Joists (58:46)

Um, like there’s floor registers outside of a walk-in shower. Why is there a floor register outside of a walk-in shower?

Yeah. Why is that there?

If that backs up, which it happens, you get hair in the drain. All of a sudden, now you got water in your HVAC system. That’s not good. And I say to the contractor, like if they’re doing like a a direct replacement, but they want to make it a walk-in shower, there’s a heat register, when you open up that shower door, the water’s going right in that right in that register. I’m like, no, you know, I

Well, it’s what happened last time. And who’s who’s paying attention? When you do a retrofit like that, don’t What are they doing? Just cutting the floor joist to get the pitch and everything else they need. I mean, that’s

Well, I have a little secret way of doing it where we don’t cut any beams. We just flush out like you kind of defer it in a sense and you just flush out the subfloor with the top of the floor joist. Okay? And you can gain yourself depending on the thickness of the subfloor, you can gain 3/4 typically. Sometimes it’s 1 in depending on the stuff and sometimes that’s all you need to do what you got to do.

All right. Um that’s much thinner than I was thinking it would be.

I prefer to not cut any floor joist ever. Like I am so against cutting structural framing. I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to be responsible for it. I just, you know, you see a sagging house and you know there’s a reason why this house is sagging. So, I don’t want to be one of those guys that’s responsible for that, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a good thing.

Large-Format Porcelain Slabs: What They Are and How They’re Handled (1:00:04)

I want to um I think we kind of we we gave I think we probably gave more information than most people are going to process on the waterproofing, but that’s okay. Um I want to talk about something else that you guys are doing that I think is a trend we’ve seen in a lot of the houses we do, and that’s like large format porcelain. Um beautiful. you guys do. I mean, the slabs that you guys are working with are pretty dramatic. So, I want to talk a little bit about like what goes into that, what it is, and also um I’m sure that’s because that’s such a specialty, like I’m sure there’s special care that needs to be done on the design side as well as the contractor side in order to make that successful when you guys get to do the work.

So, absolutely. You know, um you know, a lot of the material that we use if we’re doing it in the field is like six millimeter thick. Um, and these slabs can range, you know, a lot of the slabs initially were four feet by eight feet and they’re up to five feet by 10 feet and larger. Um, and it really becomes an issue in a finished home on how to get these slabs inside. Um, and the shipping of the slab. There’s a lot that goes into this. And I remember taking, it was either 2014 or 2015. I was at the Laticrete headquarters in Connecticut. I took one of my top guys at the time and we got certified in installing porcelain slabs. And I remember the instructor, Noah Chitty, I think he helped write the spec on some of the stuff initially. Um, we got certified right there. It was a one or a two-day class. Um, and I remember like we didn’t learn anything special that we didn’t know before. It was basically logistics. That’s what really stuck out in my mind. It was all logistics.

You got to think to yourself, you have a six millimeter thick piece of porcelain tile. Now, we know like porcelain, it uh it breaks easy, right? Uh more than just chips. It it tends to just like it’s it’s brittle. Like it breaks and ju just cuz we work in inches. So 6 millimeter, what’s that roughly?

And it’s like quarter inch. Quarter inch thick.

Okay. You know, um it’s thin. It can’t hold its own weight.

So, it’s a wait, it’s a sheet 5 foot wide, 10 feet long, and it’s a quarter inch thick.

Quarter inch thick. And most people, I don’t know if they’re watching this, if they’ve seen natural stone flexes like crazy. If you ever cut a thin strip in my my brother’s shop, it will cut like a thin strip of marble, like 8 feet. You can wiggle it without it breaking to a certain point until it breaks. And porcelain’s the same way. It can wiggle until it breaks. Um, there’s a decent amount of movement in it. But if you were to take a 4×8 sheet or a 5×10 sheet of a porcelain slab and lift it up from the middle, it’s going to crack in half. It cannot support its own weight. So, you need skeletal systems to maneuver this stuff and to cut this stuff. So, basically, there’s these suction cup racks that you can um suction cup onto these things so they’re rigid enough so that you can move them. And then there’s guys online that, you know, they have ways with just two suction cups. they can they know how to handle the material so they’re not stressing it in the middle. Um but that takes a lot of experience to learn how to move these things without breaking them. Um and a lot of the videos online I see them not going according to spec.

Slab Installation Specs, Framing, and Cutting (1:03:13)

Um but just think about this what specs specifically like what what do you what kind of specifications do you have to do in order to install a porcelain slab?

You’re technically supposed to be uh the wall supposed to be there should be no more than 1/8 of an inch deviation in 10 ft. Good luck finding that.

Okay.

So, when I do these porcelain slabs, I request that the bathroom areas wherever we’re putting them are framed with timber strand, which is the engineered studs, right? So, that helps everybody, but it doesn’t matter. They still got to check the walls. There could be a bump somewhere somehow. Um, but it makes sense to not use traditional lumber. it makes sense to use um the engineered lumber because it’s straighter, it’s more rigid, it’s got a lot of benefits. So, I’m a big fan of the engineered lumber.

Okay.

Um for these things um but in in order to fabricate these pieces, you need to know how to cut them. Like for example, you really can’t have an L cut, like an L-shaped cut in a porcelain slab. It will break. May not break right there. It may break in a week or a year, but basically no stone should ever have a 90 degree cut in it because you’re telling the stone to break there. You should have a radius in that cut.

Um, but here’s the flip side to this. I’ve seen like my doctor’s office, I tiled his um his floor was like 2,000 square feet of wood grain tiles. It’s pretty intricate floor. The building was over 100 years old. We had to put an extra steel supports because it wasn’t going to hold the weight of all the mud we had to do because it went from like we had to cheat 5/8 of mud on one side of the building. By the time we got to the other it was 4 and 1/2 in to be level. So they had to resupport the floor. We tile this large wood grain tile. And then it came time for doing the porcelain slabs, but he didn’t want to pay my price, which I understand because it’s expensive. And he had a cheaper crew come in there and they square cut all the outlets. They’re just totally square cut. Um, none of them broke. Every time I go in there, I always look at his tile. Nothing has broke. Fast forward till you do a job with a two foot by four foot tile where you make an L cut and it breaks like almost instantly in the next week. So, there’s really no rhyme or reason to why things are breaking or not breaking or if the spec is within an eighth or not. That’s just what they want you to do and it’s a good practice to follow. But, I’ve seen people violate spec and never have a problem and then there’s that job where there’s a problem. But basically by having a 90 degree cut in this stuff, you’re telling it where to break.

And in in the thicker levels of these porcelain slabs, they’re not all six millimeter. They’re they come in different thicknesses. Once you get into a thicker size slab, you have to relieve the tension that’s in that slab and you have to cut the perimeter of it. So the 6 millimeter as a tile installer, we like to work with and it makes sense to work with in that thickness and and heaviness because they get pretty heavy. Um, but fabrication shops also do this stuff too. It’s just it just takes some time because if you’re a fabrication shop, you’re fabricating a piece, you’re putting it in, then you’re templating the other one, putting it in. So, it’s a lot of back and forth. When we’re on site templating and cutting, you know, it happens a little bit quicker sometimes. Um, and that’s the thing, you’re not really a tile, you’re in between a tile guy and a fabrication shop because as a fabrication shop really setting these large porcelain panels all day, like we’re used to mixing thin set. used to troweling like there’s techniques all the logistics of this stuff.

Troweling Technique for Slabs (1:06:34)

It’s there’s nothing special about this that we do any different than tile except it’s just more strict. You trowel the same direction on the wall that you do on the piece, but you’re supposed to first flat trowel the wall which is keying in the substrate. You’re burning it into the substrate with a flat trowel and then you notch it the same direction as the porcelain piece. And I remember Noah Chitty in this uh class, he goes he asked a question. He goes, “What do you first? Do you trowel the wall or do you trowel the tile? And everyone’s like, “What do you mean? It should be the same.” He’s like, “You trowel the tile first.” Because the tile is porcelain. It’s really not absorbing any water. It’s so minuscule. So, you trowel the piece first and then you go and trowel the wall cuz that’s absorbing water. So, if you were to trowel that wall first and then go to your piece, all that time the thin set’s starting to dry out. So, again, it’s all logistics on doing this.

So, and then when you trowel that wall, if you’re troweling a shower wall that’s five feet wide, right? And you say you have a 5-foot piece of stone going on the back of that wall, you can’t trowel from left to right with your hand, your hand’s going to hit that corner. You have to trowel to the middle in one direction and then go from the other direction and trowel to the middle because you can’t just go one swipe across a wall. Your hand and trowel will hit it or you get a big fat clump of thin set on one side. You’re troweling to the middle and to the middle and then your piece has to be troweled the same exact way. Do people do this? No. Well, they don’t. I do it, but people don’t do this. I don’t know if they paid attention in training, but you could have a a big layer of thin set built up behind this quarter-inch piece, and they are bendable, and you can actually have these slabs bend.

Well, there and there’s also I mean people that are that are interested can go if you if I think I’ve seen them on YouTube where there’s videos of people troweling on the back of like glass panels. So you can see how like the thin set pushes out.

Yeah. This is how you have the thin set and the reason because the air needs to escape so you get the max the coverage that you need for the tile, right? So if you’re just

Oh yeah, I just haphazardly threw it up there but it’s all over or

Yes, that’s exactly how it is. But there but you can do that with some types of thin sets on the floor. So, but on the wall it’s more specific. You can’t use a portable thin set on the wall really. Um, you can cheat things, but and honestly, that’s where the level we’re at where I I feel like we’re just manipulating things to work when they’re not supposed to. That’s the level I feel like I’m at in my business is just constant manipulation of what is not supposed to be. Um, but like I physically my hand hits a corner. I can’t get the trowel teeth into that corner unless I turn the trowel and go this way. So, you just got to mirror all that stuff. When I watch these big slab guys, they’re just troweling all over the place. They go in there and I’m like, I wonder how many cracked slabs.

The Downsides of Slabs: Repairs and Replacement (1:09:18)

Now, just imagine, say you had a big floor that’s like 200 feet and you have a couple of these big slabs. Let’s just say one of them breaks. How you fixing that slab? That’s a lot of work.

The whole floor’s coming out because let’s just say we magically chip out a 10 foot x 5 foot piece of slab. Let’s just magically we chip it out. And at the last second, and it happens all the time, you chip the one next to it. Now you’re taking out another 50 feet of tile. So there’s a downside to these slabs and why you’re really not going to see any tile bigger than four feet on an airport floor because it’ll never be right. Like you’ll never pick it out. I know they’re doing um I also have a union installation company. I’ll do some union work. Um it’s separate, you know, they’re two separate companies. Um but like on big union jobs and commercial projects like that, you’re really not going to see that kind of stuff specced. you’ll see like terrazzo spec mostly um which I think is a wonderful product but the nice thing about tile is if you do chip it you can change it but how do you change a large tile like 2 foot x 4 foot is a lot more manageable than 5 by 10 so you know that’s the downside to this stuff.

So let’s just say someone comes in and drilled and I had this happen to me someone came in and they they drilled a handheld in the wrong spot what do you do now what do you do I’ll tell you what I in I I scuffed up the surface. I cleaned it. I primed it with a primer that could be submerged, P4 primer. Um, and then I just put a new piece right over that.

Okay?

Cuz if I were to remove that piece, now again, they’re 6 millimeters, so I’m not really losing any wall space as long as the shower body is not there because then you’d have to adjust the depth of the shower body. But we were able to just go right over tile over tile. And tile’s rated to go tile over tile. But what do you do? Yeah, you can’t rip it out because now you have to rip out You’re never going to tie the waterproofing in around that corner. So, you can’t just simply cut out the cement board and put in a new piece of cement board because now you can’t really tie the waterproofing in properly or 100%. So, the option became tile over tile. That is the downside. Now, if these were smaller tiles, you chip out the tile, patch up whatever waterproofing got destroyed, and put another tile in there.

Slab vs. Natural Stone: Cost and Maintenance (1:11:31)

And and what’s the upside? The upside to these large format tiles out of these.

All right, so here’s the upside. What would a natural stone slab bathroom cost?

I have no idea.

So, okay, so let’s let’s say you can get this material anywhere between $15 and $20 a square foot, right? And is maintenance-free. It’s porcelain. It’s pretty scratch resistant. Um, you can clean it with anything. You don’t have to seal it. And it is exactly the piece you saw. basically almost exactly the same piece you saw on the showroom floor, right? So, you could get a bathroom that looks like a slab bathroom. You get a slab bathroom for a fraction of the cost with no maintenance. Almost no maintenance, right? So, you’re getting natural stone bathrooms. Like, say you had something like Calacatta. What are you paying a foot nowadays out here?

200 bucks a foot. 250. You would know better than I would.

Probably like around 250 bucks a square foot.

you’re paying, you know, $80 or like like I usually charge somewhere around $65 a foot for slab to install, right? The materials costing them 20 bucks. So, that’s an $85 a square foot cost with no maintenance. If installed properly, it’s basically a lifetime.

Mhm.

So, um, versus $250 plus dollars a square foot and it’s thicker, it’s heavier, the stone’s going to be at least 3/4 of an inch. Um, logistically, it’s it’s it’s even more of a nightmare sometimes. Um, and you know, you have to maintain it. No one likes maintenance around here. But if you’re in a high-end home, like a super high-end home, they don’t always necessarily want to see the porcelain step because it’s not real. It’s just the stigma. That’s it. So, it really depends on the customer and what they like. Some people like, I had enough. I’m not maintaining anything, you know, but some people are like, I will not have that in my house. I have to have the real thing. I understand both sides, you know.

Grout Problems and Epoxy Grout (1:13:25)

Um, but for me, I have porcelain slab in my house and is a maintenance-free item, you know, like grout is 5% of the cost and 95% of all problems is grout.

What do you mean by problems?

The grout like it chips out or it cracked. You always get, “Oh, my grout’s cracking. Oh, my grout’s dirty. Oh, my grout’s moldy. My grout’s this. My grout’s that.” You know, the grout’s discoloring. I don’t have that because I don’t have any grout, you know? So like that’s the problem with tile in essence is grout. So you eliminate the grout problem. Like that is the ugliest thing of all of tile. I do a lot of epoxy grout just because grout cement cementitious stuff absorbs color, absorbs stains. So you don’t really want to have um you know you limit the grout, you limit the problem.

And when you say epoxy grout, what what kind of what product do you normally recommend?

I used to use a lot of the Ardex epoxy grout, but they um got rid of a lot of their epoxy grouts if I’m not mistaken. And I use a lot of the Mapei um epoxy grouts, and they’ve gotten pretty easy to use. Um it’s still labor intensive if you want to do it correctly. I have my own little system to install it. Um but it’s epoxy. In a certain amount of time, it’s dry, so you better be correct. Um but if you do it right, it’s it’s a lifetime item, you know, and super strong and it’s not going to stain. It can still get dirty, but a little elbow grease gets it right out. So, I epoxy grouted the whole first floor to my house. Um, if anybody, you know, you have a house that you clean, you clean, you clean. Sometimes you get something on your floor, you want to clean it up with bleach sometimes, even though you’re not supposed to, but like maybe uh a dog had an accident or something. You want to clean up something heavy duty. If you had cement based grout, you’re going to stain that grout. I don’t have to worry about that really with epoxy. It’s pretty chemical safe. So, and it’s very hard and it’s honestly our way to cheat.

Setting Glass Tile with Epoxy (1:15:15)

And that’s kind of how I found Ardex is through a Schluter level two class. They turned me on to Ardex. It’s like the funniest thing in the world. I had to cheat. Back to that whole thing like we’re at a level where we’re manipulating. We’re not really following rules here. Like, you’re not supposed to be able to use glass tile over these waterproofing membranes. You’re not supposed to be able to set glass over them. We do it all the time. Like, how do you not use glass? So, the way we use glass over these products is we set them with epoxy. We don’t use cement. So, um there’s like two types of glass. There’s glass with a a backing on it, like a white backing, so you don’t see through it, which is wonderful. And then there’s glass that’s clear and the color is actually within the glass and it has a paper face on it. It’s very difficult to install. So, when you’re installing that type of glass on a shower floor and you’re using thin set, eventually at thin set, you’re going to see the thin set get dirty underneath there, like water is going to migrate underneath there. And that clear, beautiful oceanside glass floor that you put down on this walk-in shower floor is going to look moldy and gross because the mold will only be on the surface, but like it will eventually get in there um and get trapped in there, especially with glass. So, you use epoxy and it’ll never change color. It’ll always look great. And it will bond to the glass and to the waterproofing membrane.

The Future of Tile: Where the Trend Is Going (1:16:42)

In your opinion, what’s is there something that’s going to be the next thing? Is there things that are

I think so. You know, and um you know, this ties into the porcelain slab. So, like the highest end look you could possibly have in your home is slab, right? From ancient times. You go to some of these uh gilded age homes, right, out in Nassau County, um they have slab bathrooms. Like you’re royalty if you had a slab bathroom. Like no one has them, right? That’s like you can’t get any higher end. You can’t make any more of a statement than having a slab bathroom.

Slab Logistics: Getting It Through the Door (1:17:13)

Um and one more thing I just have to mention, the doors are an issue with a slab bathroom. You have a a regular height door and I’m putting in a 10-ft piece of stone. How am I getting it through that door if I can’t physically fit a 10-ft piece inside of the bathroom and turn it upright? What am I doing? How do I get it in there? We’re cutting slabs in the field that we weren’t planned to cut because no one thought of this problem. I can’t tell you how many times we take the door off and saw out the header and get a floor to ceiling piece in there. We’re removing the plumbing fixtures. We’re I mean, not me personally, but the they’re calling the plumber to hurry up and get here and remove this stuff. Even though we told them to remove it, no one wants to believe you. But logistically, it’s a nightmare to use this big stuff, right? Because you really need to think two steps ahead. You need to think down to the framing process. How am I getting this large slab into here without breaking it or actually fitting it in there? If I can’t turn it upright in the bathroom, how’s it getting in the door? So, you need to have the door out.

From Slabs to Plastic Panels (1:18:17)

Um, which brings me to where is this going? I talked to vice president of Arley. He’s a friend of mine. Um, and we talk about this like where do you think tile’s going? You know, like my father passed away in ’08. You know, tiles were just starting to change then. Um, tiles were still kind of small. Now you have to be a half a chemist to do half of this stuff. Between the linear drains, the liquid waterproofings and mixing them and these, you know, for a while with the Schluter, it’s like you had to use unmodified or modified or this or that and blah blah blah blah blah, right? So, and all that has all changed and it’s ever changing. Um, so where is the trend going? I think the trend is still going big. I think people are sick of grout. I think that the technology has caught up with CNC machinery, um, 3D printing and, um, all those types of advancements. People still want a large product with the no maintenance that looks high-end. So, where do I think it’s going? I think it’s going to plastic panels. I don’t think it’s going necessarily to porcelain panels.

Why have a porcelain panel when I can have a plastic panel? My plastic panel can bend around corners. My plastic panel shares a lot of the same cleaning aspects where it doesn’t need to be sealed. I can clean it with almost anything. And now it has a texture on it. It’s a little softer because it’s PVC.

Will the Hamptons accept it because of the stigma of it not being real?

I think they have an easier time accepting porcelain rather than plastic. As these advance, you’re going to see them more and more. It’s going to happen faster than you think, way faster than you think. Now, just think of New York City, right? You know, Ba like I don’t know if I’m allowed to say Bath Fitter as a company, but we know Bath Fitter, right? They had these panels that they would either glue over your existing work or you could do it brand new. It’s the same idea. It’s just larger panels that a tile guy is going to install. What they haven’t figured out yet is how does it integrate with the shower floor? Floor and Decor sells one, Panel XL, and they sell a pan. And I asked the guy there because I know he doesn’t have an answer. How does this integrate with the shower floor? Oh, he just silicone it to the shower floor. I’m like, really? So, I’m just going to silicone a piece of plastic that’s a quarter inch thick to the top of a shower base and that’s going to keep water from going around. What if someone kicks the bottom and breaks the seal? I have water pouring out. Poor answer. Poor idea. So, you can set these panels if a shower base had a flange. But the idea is how do you get a sizable pan with a flange to integrate with this stuff? That’s going to be the answer. So when it comes out with that, that’s and it’s going that way and it’s coming that way.

Custom vs. Standard Showers, and Seamless Pans (1:20:51)

I I mean not on the high end. I’ve seen on the low end for standard size showers, right? You know, for oh this is a 30 by, you know, 5 foot or 30×40, whatever it is. But on the custom side, I guess with what you’re saying, if if they could manufacture that now, 3D printing or scan a room and have all the exact dimensions, and there’s plenty of guys that uh you can get a custom foam pan made for you to whatever size. You give them the measurements and they have these foam cutters and they cut it and all this other stuff and it’s great. I’d rather do cement, but like these are seamless systems and honestly, even though you do tile and you have the waterproofing system, you have epoxy, tile still takes care of maintenance and cleaning.

The best kind of shower pans. You go to high-end hotels in Europe, they’re all like acrylic shower bases or composite shower bases. They’re easy to clean. They’re simple. You have the texture in there. Like, yeah, it’s not as, you know, fancy of a design as a custom tile job, but they’re elegant. They’re easy. They check off a lot of boxes. So, how do I integrate these panels with those pans? That’s going to really be the main challenge. But just think about city areas and speed. You can do one of these plastic paneled showers if you’re really good supposedly because I haven’t done one yet in this time, but 45 minutes.

Holy cow.

Just think about three panels that are plastic. Template it, cut it, go. Some of these panels are going to have inside corners. Now, it’s not going to be as pretty, but kind of like J channel where you don’t have to have a perfect cut. You slip it in a J channel and you’re done.

You’re done.

And it’s watertight. So, think about everybody with rentals. Say you have a Hamptons rental out here, right? All right. And these party people are going to destroy a house. You think they really care if it’s real slab or not? Some might, but for people, most people, they’re not going to really care. They’re spending the summer out here.

Who Notices? Homeowners, Guests, and “It’s All Caulk” (1:22:37)

Well, it’s and it’s also a thing, too, where like you said, there’s certain like they’ll still probably be slab bathrooms on the super high end.

Yeah.

But on, you know, a young couple that just bought their first house and they want to redo their bathroom, right? And look nice. and they want it to look nice, but like oh maybe now it’s oh it’s PVC maybe that’s something you know that is oh if the cost is decreased but they can get a new bathroom or there’s going to be a room for that

I can’t tell you their friends are going to come over the house they’re going to see the bathroom like oh my god this is amazing I love this bathroom they don’t have a clue it’s porcelain or stone or what they have no idea I can’t tell you like the customer sees the finished product we are in the business so we have a different eye than everybody else I remember because I had someone work with me once that wasn’t in the industry and they’re Matt, it’s all caulk to the homeowner. They have no idea. Like I’m trying to explain technical stuff as a young kid to them and they’re just like looking at me like a deer in headlights. And I get in the truck and it was it was my mom’s neighbor and he was retired. He’s like, “Man, it’s all caulk to them. They have no care in the world. That is care about what it looks like finished.” I was like, “You know what? You’re right.”

So when these people do these these plastic shower systems and they bring their friends in, their friends are going to say, “Hey, this is beautiful. I really like this.” They’re not going to know it’s fake. half them aren’t going to know unless they tell them. Um, and they’re going to have that shower system for a very, very long time. And now, as this gets more popular, there’s going to be more bells and whistles available for these systems, like corner pieces, inside corners, outside corners that all match, integrated niches, corner shelves, all that stuff’s going to be available, but it looks better than ever. It’s not just plain white.

Renovating in New York City (1:24:10)

And for New York City, you need to renovate. It’s hard to do demo in New York City, especially on a 30th floor.

Oh, yeah.

And if it’s not, even if it’s leaking, if you can, I’ve waterproofed over existing tile jobs before, if they were sound enough, but there was an issue if like say the flange broke or something like that and I don’t need it cuz I’m changing the floor anyway, I can use that existing base and waterproof over it if you know what you’re doing. Um, especially these cementitious liquids can go over it and then I can put these plastic panels right on top. But if it’s not leaking, just think about how easy it is to renovate. And usually in that quarter inch thickness, you don’t even have to adjust the shower body. Usually, not all the time. So, just think about how easy it’s going to be to do renovation work in city areas.

Well, yeah. And you know, just say, you know, it’s a shame. Every piece of plastic that was ever made is basically still in existence today unless it was burned. So, we have such an abundance of plastic. Why can’t we use that abundance of plastic somehow to reuse it to make these panels?

That’s It’s interesting. I haven’t even thought of that and I I’ll have to do some research and see what that looks like. But that’s I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re seeing that in the next 5 10 years.

Radiant Floor Heat and Coordinating Trades (1:25:13)

That’s why I like the electric heat. When when these tile systems came out with the electric heat, I did a job in Aquebogue is in the middle of a farm. Basically, these homes, they have nothing but sunlight. This guy heated his whole basement without changing his HVAC system. I mean, it was incredible. And he made so much energy like just being in the sun the whole time. He didn’t need to run heat down there. like he just used his electric heat that he had solar was paying for everything and we just put all these heat wires in there. Yeah, there’s initial costs for the wires and the thermostats, but I mean it’s pretty cool that as a tile guy we’re we’re kind of touching on every subject, but also brings me back to the point where like I zone off the areas myself. I don’t know if I trust everybody to zone it off. I trust myself and I shouldn’t. Sounds cocky probably, but some of these tile guys are running a large wire into a little bathroom. I’m like, you’re going to cook that little bathroom, especially if the sensor’s out in a large area.

Mhm.

But they’re allowed to put it in. So sometimes the electrician does it, sometimes we do it, sometimes they do it. And I’m just like all these new products are just new groundbreaking stuff. And it’s like there’s no regul there’s not enough regulation of who’s doing well. And you need a lot of thought into that. Like, hey, we’re going to do like this is a small bathroom. We should have a separate thermostat in a separate zone. This is a large open room. We should do and I think that’s I I think yeah it takes time but I think people are learning and hopefully they’re thinking about that on the planning side.

Most tile guys I experienced is like that’s not my job you know and like the electricians that want to put it in like you have that clash of when you put these mats down there’s like thin set in between. You got to clean out all the thin set joints for them. Oh we can’t put this wire in. you have a little bit of thin set on here, you know, and then like so you get like this little back and forth between trades sometimes and it’s kind of it’s hard to coordinate all the trades together all the time. Um, so sometimes it’s easier for the tile guy to put in the the wire according to if someone had a drawing and I mostly do put in the wires like and the electrician, he does the connections. They just simply put it in the mat, you know, put in the mat, bring it to the junction box and they take care of the rest. And then they pull it up the wall and they do their thing. And that’s how I prefer to do it, you know, rather them pull it up the wall. They want to separate, you know, raceway tracks up the wall for the because the sensor is low voltage and the other is like a line voltage. So like to you should really technically separate those so they don’t interfere with each other. I don’t think anyone’s thinking about that, but it’s it’s kind of that nitty-gritty stuff that’s like separates the good building from the bad building, right?

Yeah. Where you have issues with later.

It’s Yeah. Yeah.

No, I think that’s definitely something to think about as time changes that we’re going to uh it’s it’s crazy what they keep coming out with technology wise.

Yeah. It’s it’s ever changing, you know.

Labor Shortage and the Future of Custom Work (1:28:03)

Um but I really feel like this this plastic route is going to take over. Um especially as that labor pool is shrinking for us. We don’t have that quality labor anymore for tile setting here. So we just don’t have it.

It’s almost driving that the innovation of companies to say, “Hey, now anyone, not anyone, but it’s exponential because now I have I have low labor. I have technology advancements and I have trends. They’re all going in that direction.”

So what’s going to happen in years to come? Who you going to get to put in that delicate mosaic tile job? I don’t know. Who’s going to be around anymore?

Yeah.

Where you what part of the country or world plastic panel that looks like mosaic, right? And that’s

Yeah. You know, and it’s like it’s tough like are you going to notice a difference of that? Like the the highest end stuff is about imperfection. You get that stone with the imperfection or you get that handmade mosaic by somebody that’s just one of a kind. You can’t duplicate. You know, it could you could really go in every direction on this. It’s it’s interesting. But custom work, the labor pool is dying and I wish to go back to the beginning more of the young people would get into this. I think that would really help the future of uh of the industries.

Closing Thoughts: Stigma, Respect, and Opportunity in the Trades (1:29:19)

Mhm. And I would just oh I just love to see the young kids do something other than play on their phone and you know go to college and get a job doing something you know rather than it’s let it be okay for them to not want to go to college to be it’s okay to do that and I think it’s great if they want to go there but it’s also okay if they don’t want to go there.

Well it’s it’s there’s a world of opportunity in the trades and doing things and and you could be a professional in those industries and and they’re sorely needed.

Yeah. And but there’s definitely a stigma for like I know with my friends that we all went to college, there’s doctors, there’s this, there’s that. And they all, you know, there’s a stigma of like being a contractor and not a doctor like them or a lawyer like them, you know, like there’s definitely a stigma that comes to it. But um they all call me when they need something though.

Shouldn’t be so much of a stigma.

So that’s what I think, you know, and I think that’s what really needs to change, you know, goes back to respecting people for for what they do, what they know, and whatever. And that should be respected regardless of where you are in the, you know, the team that go puts that together. And all types of people, you know, like um I I appreciate any worker that wants to work. Doesn’t matter their background. Anyone that wants to work and do a good job is a good person in my book, you know, but if you don’t want to work and you don’t want to do a good job, I feel like there is no place for you on the job site. You should not be there.

Mhm.

So, it would be nice to have a new crop of anybody that just is interested in in learning and doing a good job. I I think that would be so beneficial to this to this industry and any of these industries.

Wrap-Up (1:30:53)

That sounds good. Well, I don’t know if I have much. I’m sure we could keep going more, Matt, but I think we covered almost everything.

Yeah.

Um, did you have anything else you want to just impart on or

No, I think I think that’s about it. I think this is pretty cool. Um, I’m looking forward to uh seeing more of your podcast, too.

Yeah. Yeah. We got some other people lined up. We’ll have some more people on. And uh yeah, I appreciate you coming on and sharing all that information with me. Yeah, there was a lot there.

Thank you for having me.

Old School vs. New School: Inside the Tile Trade with Matt Florio

Kassidy Scheuring

Episode Summary

Introduction (0:19)

Blending Old-School Methods with New Technology (1:03)

Is Modern Waterproofing Better? The Loss of Old-School Craftsmen (1:37)

Vinyl Pans vs. Topside Waterproofing (2:57)

Matt’s Preferred Approach: Mud Pan with Topside Waterproofing (4:36)

Growing Up in a Tile Family (5:50)

Working Job Sites as a Kid (6:53)

The Turning Point: His Father’s Illness (9:08)

Starting Florio Tile in 2008 (10:54)

How New Waterproofing Products Changed the Trade (13:03)

Licensing, Qualifications, and Who’s Responsible for Waterproofing (14:56)

Vetting Installers, Bad Design Choices, and Structural Concerns (16:20)

Having Pride in Your Work (19:08)

The Entrepreneurial Mindset (19:41)

Being Hungry, Reputation, and Word-of-Mouth (22:00)

Advice for Young People: Mirror Success and Get Paid to Learn (24:08)

Why Trade Experience Makes Better Engineers (26:46)

Respecting the Trades and Rethinking Sports vs. Skills (29:58)

Phones and Problem-Solving Skills (32:11)

What Contractors and Designers Should Know (32:50)

Fiberglass Shower Pans and Leak Failures (35:25)

Steam Showers and Vapor Proofing (36:36)

Water In/Water Out Systems Explained (38:07)

Owner Oversight and Job Site Mistakes (40:43)

Water Testing a Shower Pan (42:53)

Topside Waterproofing: Fabric Systems and Perm Ratings (45:04)

Sealing Seams: Liquids, Capillary Action, and Belt-and-Suspenders (49:03)

Cost of Waterproofing and Doubling Up on Protection (53:03)

Corner Pieces and Niches (55:13)

Shortcuts in the Field: Sealant, Silicone, and Foam (56:26)

Regulation, Accountability, and Education (57:46)

Retrofits: Floor Registers and Not Cutting Joists (58:46)

Large-Format Porcelain Slabs: What They Are and How They’re Handled (1:00:04)

Slab Installation Specs, Framing, and Cutting (1:03:13)

Troweling Technique for Slabs (1:06:34)

The Downsides of Slabs: Repairs and Replacement (1:09:18)

Slab vs. Natural Stone: Cost and Maintenance (1:11:31)

Grout Problems and Epoxy Grout (1:13:25)

Setting Glass Tile with Epoxy (1:15:15)

The Future of Tile: Where the Trend Is Going (1:16:42)

Slab Logistics: Getting It Through the Door (1:17:13)

From Slabs to Plastic Panels (1:18:17)

Custom vs. Standard Showers, and Seamless Pans (1:20:51)

Who Notices? Homeowners, Guests, and “It’s All Caulk” (1:22:37)

Renovating in New York City (1:24:10)

Radiant Floor Heat and Coordinating Trades (1:25:13)

Labor Shortage and the Future of Custom Work (1:28:03)

Closing Thoughts: Stigma, Respect, and Opportunity in the Trades (1:29:19)

Wrap-Up (1:30:53)

Related Resources

Old School vs. New School: Inside the Tile Trade with Matt Florio

True Owner Advocacy: Building Better with Michael Tagliavia of Estate Haus

What You Need to Know About New York’s All-Electric Buildings Act

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