Custom Tile
Installation
in Los Angeles.

Yes. That is what standalone tile work means here: an entryway, a fireplace, a set of stairs, a patio, a single mosaic floor. Single-surface jobs are hard to get quoted well, because there is not much there to mobilize a crew for. We have completed 120+ jobs since 2020, and this is one of the three things we do: one surface, tiled properly, and then we are out of your house.

No. Tile is the trade this company was founded on, and it stays in house. The overwhelming majority of the work is done by people who have worked for us for years, Corey inspects every stage and sets a good deal of the tile himself, and nothing gets handed to the cheapest bidder to hit a date. Subcontracting is where rushed setting and skipped prep come from, and it is the reason so much tile work fails early. We would rather do fewer jobs and stand behind all of them.

Almost always something decided before the first tile was set. The failures cluster in four places, and every one of them is prevented by the prep and planning that a fast, cheap bid skips:

• Hollow or cracked tiles, from thin mortar coverage or a missing crack isolation membrane over a slab crack
• Lippage, edges sitting proud of their neighbors, from poor floor prep and setting without a leveling system
• Crooked grout lines, from a layout nobody planned before starting in a corner
• Early system failure, from the wrong thinset or the wrong backing material for the tile and the application

The tile sets the rules, and the prep follows from it. Zellige is handmade in Morocco and no two pieces are the same thickness or perfectly square, so it gets set tight and read constantly instead of trusted to a spacer. Saltillo is soft, unsealed clay with real size variation tile to tile. Cement-based terrazzo and travertine are heavy, porous, and cut differently than porcelain. Large-format porcelain is dimensionally consistent, which is exactly why it shows every flaw in the substrate under it.

Flat matters more than level. A 12×12 terrazzo entry hides small dips; a 24-inch tile bridges them and telegraphs lippage at every edge. Once a tile has an edge over 15 inches, the substrate standard tightens to 1/8 inch in 10 feet, and if the floor is not flat enough for the tile you picked, it gets floated first. That is a line item you hear about in the estimate, not an upsell mid-job.

Yes. We work with client-sourced material, and we also source from local and national retailers: material on past jobs has come from Zia Tile, Bedrosians and Porcelanosa. If you are buying it yourself, talk to us before you order. Quantity is the usual problem: handmade tile like zellige and Saltillo varies enough that pattern-heavy layouts and diagonal cuts eat more material than a square-footage calculator suggests, and a second order months later is unlikely to match the first.

Yes, and we treat it as a different problem than an interior floor. Outside, the slab has to shed water away from the house, the setting material and grout have to be rated for exterior use, and movement joints have to be honored at the perimeter and through the field. Sun and thermal cycling do the damage in Los Angeles, not frost. Our Malibu patio was 600 square feet of 18 × 18 travertine set over a bare slab see the project.

Sometimes, and it depends on what is under there. A sound, flat slab can often be tiled directly. Loose or hollow-sounding existing tile has to come out. Brick is workable but rarely flat, so it usually needs leveling or removal first. On the Malibu Craftsman entry the old concrete steps were crumbling, so we rebuilt them with block and rebar rather than tiling over them. The other question is height: going over an existing floor raises the finish and changes door swings and transitions.

Saltillo, travertine and cement-based terrazzo are porous, so yes: unsealed clay and natural stone absorb water, oil and grout pigment. Glazed ceramic and porcelain do not need it. Sealing also changes the look: some sealers, enhancing sealers especially, deepen the color and add sheen, which is worth deciding with a sample before the whole floor is done rather than after. We will tell you what a given material needs and what it will look like once it is sealed.

It gets scoped at the walkthrough, because a fireplace surround and a 600-square-foot patio are not the same week of work. For reference, the Beverly Hills entry project, two entryways in handmade Malibu tile with the side steps rebuilt from block and rebar, took five working days see the project. You get a real window in the estimate rather than a number off a web page.

The consultation and estimate are free. We work on a standard payment plan and we do not offer financing. Corey walks the job himself before anything is quoted, so the number is based on your actual substrate and your actual tile rather than an average. If the walkthrough turns up something that changes the scope (a cracked slab, a floor that needs floating), you hear about it then, in the estimate, not halfway through the install.

We're based in Northeast Los Angeles and generally work within about 50 miles: Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Glassell Park, Mount Washington, Atwater Village, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and Echo Park close to home, then Pasadena, South Pasadena, Altadena, Sierra Madre, San Marino, Alhambra, Monrovia, and Arcadia to the east, and Glendale and Burbank to the north. We also head out west as far as Malibu for the right project. If you're near the edge of that radius, ask. We'd rather tell you yes or no on the phone than have you guess.