on the cover

June 2010
ON THE COVER:
Custom Building Products
Mold: a forensic analysis
of a shower installation
The Seventh Annual
TileLetter Awards
Grand Prize Winners
Total Solutions Plus:
Partners in Progress
T h e S E V E N T H A nn u a l
Awa r d s
Grand Prize winners
By Lesley Goddin
This year’s TileLetter Awards were announced in our Coverings issue (page 62)
and during the Coverings show in Orlando in a special ceremony. The awards
were expanded to include Stone and Mosaic categories, so we have four Grand
Prize winners in total. In this issue, we’ll focus on the Residential and Commercial
winners, with a spotlight on the Stone and Mosaic winners in August. Grand
Prize Residential and Commercial winners took home $1,500 each.
Residential Grand Prize
Cox Tile
Mediterranean Masterpiece
San Antonio, Texas
This grand prize winner received a perfect score, a testament to the detail, craftsmanship, and beauty displayed in this
awesome Spanish-Mediterranean home.
Magnificent hallways radiate from the
foyer of this $230,000 project, adorned
with antiqued tumbled marble patterns
and wood inlays. The base was customcut into the sheetrock so the tile would
be flush with the wall finish.
This Certified Tile Installer – who
32
also won a Residential Grand Prize
in 2008 – mitered every corner and
centered field tile on every wall. Great
care was taken to keep floors and walls
absolutely level and even from room
to room, and with varying thicknesses
of material, resulting in floors totally
devoid of lippage. Medium bed mortar and mudsetting were employed to
achieve this ideal.
In the powder room, custom-cut
1x1-inch onyx accent pieces frame
the 12x12-inch onyx floor tiles. In the
Moroccan master bath, 18x18-inch
limestone floors radiate warmth from
www.tileletter.com v June 2010
underfloor heating. The tub backsplash
and shower wall showcase handcrafted
Moroccan mosaic tiles, imperceptibly
cut to allow it to seamlessly follow the
curved wall.
The same limestone embellishes the
steam shower floors and walls, custom-
34
cut to add patterns to floor and ceiling,
and to frame the cathedral window. A
precision-cut jamb rises to an arched
opening in the shower enclosure, with
the cut arch carried inside the shower
and two channels cut around the inside
of the jamb to accept the fixed glass
header and seamless glass doors.
The Moroccan theme is echoed in
the exterior courtyards and patios with
colorful tile accents of various sizes and
thicknesses.
Setting materials: Nuheat radiant
flooring, Schluter Kerdi, Tavy Thinskin,
GP’s DensShield, MAPEI Ultra Contact
NTCA personnel Bart Bettiga, executive director (left), TileLetter editor
Lesley Goddin (center) and NTCA
assistant executive director Jim Olson
present the Residential Grand Prize
trophy to John Cox with crew members Kelly Holder (center left) and
John Cronen (far right).
www.tileletter.com v June 2010
mortar, TEC SturdiLight, SuperFlex,
3 N 1 mortars and HydraFlex waterproofing, Nobleseal TS crack isolation
membranes, Custom grout. Setting
materials were supplied in part by
Daltile.
Grand Prize Commercial
Battles & Battles Tile
University of Tennessee,
Baker Rotunda, Knoxville, Tenn.
Battles & Battles Tile, the latest
NTCA member to pass the Certified
Tile Installer exam, takes home the
commercial gold for this stellar project that centers on the four story,
50-foot diameter marble and granite
rotunda at University of Tennessee
at Knoxville. This project includes
granite-clad columns, lobby walls,
elevator floors and walls, and marble
balcony curbs. The job was bid in
2005, with installation beginning
Damon Battles proudly holds
the TileLetter Awards trophy
for Commercial Grand Prize,
as well as his Certified Tile
Installer certificate from CTEF,
surrounded by NTCA staff.
Judging the awards
Since you, the reader, is not privy to
the actual judging of the awards, here’s
the process in a nutshell. I receive all
the entries, give them an alphanumeric code and make sure all materials sent to the judges are totally confidential and anonymous. An Excel
spreadsheet is devised to evaluate the
coded entries in the following categories: scope, complexity, technical
soundness, design, and presentation.
Each category has a different “weight”
depending on the importance of
the category (for instance, technical
soundness counts for 35 percent of
the evaluation, while scope or size
accounts for 10 percent.)
Judges receive the anonymous
entries and the evaluation materials,
read all the narratives (that’s why
they need to be short and concise!)
and accompanying materials, and
view all the photographic prints.
They score each entry in each category and Excel calculates the results.
Sometimes, further discussion ensues
and the final winners are determined.
It’s only then that Bart – who has
been sent the key that decodes the
entries – announces the winners,
sends me the results, and winners are
notified. Then the fun of creating the
awards presentation begins!
John Kelty, of Kelty Tile & Marble (left) and
Skip Peters, of Craft-Croswell, pored over the
entries. NTCA’s Jim Olson and Gerald Sloan
also took part in the judging.
38
in 2008. In the interim, Battles
& Battles gathered stone samples,
found a fabricator for the two honed
marbles and three polished granites,
and located a supplier for the oversized Crema Marbil marble column
elements.
The floor was crafted of 12x12inch tiles cut to make the circular
pattern. Stone was thick-set on a
one-and-a-half inch bed of fat mud
– a customized mix of Portland
cement, sand and mason’s clay.
The elevator floors echoed elements of the rotunda pattern.
Floating walls facing the rotunda
were tiled with Crema Marfil. Stone
for this $180,000 project was fabricated straight out of the quarry in
China – a process made easier by a
savvy Chinese stone representative.
Creating curves from flat tile and
allowing for the various thicknesses of the stone posed the greatest
challenges. For instance, 3-foot tall,
6-inch thick slabs were fabricated
to clad the concrete posts and create the four-piece, 3-foot round column base for the eight columns,
each of which weighed close to 400
pounds. Balcony curbs featured flat
6-inch face pieces that the contractor
adhered to the substrate, then ground
and hand-polished in place to create a
smooth concave surface. Curved top
pieces were cut from 6x12-inch stone
and ground and polished to form the
radius.
Setting
materials:
Custom
Polyblend non-sanded grout; Aqua
Mix Stone Enhancer.
www.tileletter.com v June 2010