How to Choose a Tile Installer in Orlando: A Buyer's Guide

You asked three companies to quote the same tile job and the numbers came back thousands of dollars apart. Same room, same tile, same square footage. That gap is confusing, and it is also the most useful information you have.

Almost always, what changed between those bids is not the price of the work. It is the amount of work. This is the guide we wish every homeowner had before hiring anybody in this trade, ourselves included. We are a family-owned Orlando tile company, more than 20 years in Central Florida homes, licensed and insured, and usually not the low bid. We would rather you hire the right installer than hire us by accident.

Read the scope, not the total

Put the three quotes side by side and cover the bottom number. The difference between a cheap bid and a careful one is rarely the tile, which costs about the same wherever it is bought. It is the work you never see once the job is done.

Here is what tends to be missing from the low quote:

• Substrate prep and leveling. Large-format tile, 12x24 inches and up, needs a floor flat to roughly 1/8 inch over 10 feet. Grinding, patching, or pouring self-leveling underlayment costs real hours, and it quietly vanishes from some bids.
• Waterproofing. In a shower this means a membrane system: sloped pan, sealed corners, treated seams, and a niche built to shed water. It is the easiest item to skip, because nobody sees it once tile is on the wall.
• Movement joints. Soft joints at the perimeter and across a large floor give tile room to expand. Florida slabs move more than people expect, and a floor grouted tight wall to wall eventually cracks or tents along a line.
• Trim and edge profiles. Outside corners, shower curbs, and transitions to wood or carpet have to be finished somehow. A metal profile, a mitered edge, and a plastic strip are three different prices and three different looks.
• Haul-away and dust control. Demolition debris has to leave your property. Ask whether the dumpster is in the price, plus containment so the rest of the house stays livable.
• Grout sealing and final detail. Sealing where the material calls for it, flexible caulk at every change of plane instead of grout, and a real punch walk at the end.

Once you can see those six items, the bids usually explain themselves. Our breakdown of custom tile installation costs in Orlando goes through the math line by line.

Six questions worth asking every bidder

Ask all three the same questions and compare the answers, not the confidence behind them.

1. Who is actually on site each day? You want to know whether the person quoting the job is the person setting the tile, and how many people will be in your house.
2. Is the crew employed or subcontracted? Either can be fine. What matters is that whoever holds the trowel is insured and answerable to the company you signed with.
3. What waterproofing system will you use, and will you flood test? Listen for a named product and a yes on the flood test, which means filling the pan overnight before tile goes down.
4. How flat will you get the substrate, and how? A good answer names a tolerance and a technique. A vague one means leveling is not really in the price.
5. How will outside corners be finished? Mitered tile, a metal profile, or bullnose. There is a right answer for your job, and it should be settled before tile is ordered.
6. What happens if a tile is damaged a year from now? Ask who keeps the leftover stock, what the workmanship warranty covers, and how a repair gets handled.

Licensing, insurance, and the certificate

Ask for a license number and look it up yourself. Then ask for a certificate of insurance sent directly from their agent, not a photo of a card, showing general liability and workers compensation, with your name and property address as certificate holder.

If an uninsured worker is hurt in your home, or a supply line gets hit during demolition, whose policy pays becomes a very real question. Any established company can produce that certificate in a day.

Deposits and payment schedules

A modest deposit is normal. Something in the range of 10 to 30 percent to hold the date and buy material is typical, then progress payments tied to milestones and a final payment after you walk the finished job.

What should give you pause: a large cash deposit before anything is scheduled, a request for most of the money up front, cash only with no invoice, pressure to sign today, and any number handed over without a written scope. Good installers are booked weeks out.

The written scope matters more than the total

A quote that says master bath tile, $9,400 is not a quote. It is a number. Ask for the scope in writing: rooms and square footage, tile and setting materials named, prep and leveling described, waterproofing system named, layout, grout color, edge treatment at every corner and transition, who hauls debris, and how many days it takes.

Two bids that both spell that out can be compared honestly. A bid that will not put it in writing is the one most likely to grow once the floor is open.

What to look for in a portfolio

Ask for photos of their own recent work, close up rather than wide room shots. Look at four things:

• Grout joint consistency. Joints should be the same width across the whole field, and the lines should stay straight over long distances.
• Cuts at outlets and corners. Cuts around a switch, a shower valve, or an inside corner are where care shows.
• Pattern alignment at doorways. Where a floor passes through a door, the pattern should carry straight through instead of restarting.
• How a border lands. Look at where the cut row falls against walls. Good layout puts full tiles where the eye goes and the cuts where it does not.

Our own project gallery is there for this kind of inspection.

Red flags

None of these prove a bad installer alone. Two or three together are worth walking away from: no physical address or license number anywhere, no photos of their own finished work, a firm price given over the phone without seeing the space, refusal to put scope in writing, and pressure to decide immediately.

An honest word about the low bid

The cheapest quote is not automatically wrong. On a straight-lay porcelain floor in a bedroom or hallway, over a slab that is already sound and flat, a lean crew doing simple work well is a fair deal, and we will tell you so.

Where the low bid gets expensive is showers, large-format tile over an uneven slab, and pattern work. A herringbone or chevron layout lives or dies on layout time and cutting, and savings there come out of the labor that makes it look right. Our post on herringbone and chevron installation shows where those hours go.

Hold us to the same standard

Everything above applies to us. Ask who will be in your house, what membrane we use, whether we flood test, how flat we will get your slab, and how we plan to finish your outside corners. Read our scope before you look at our number.

If our answers are better than the other two, hire us. If not, hire the company whose answers were better. Either way you end up with a floor you are not redoing in five years.

For a written scope and a real quote, call us at 407-538-1155 or reach us through our contact page. We come out, measure, check the slab, and price the job for free.