It acted as a grand entrance for homeowners hallways as they greeted guests. It acted as a subtle marketing tool for businesses that could incorporate their name into the mosaic tiling designs at the front door of their shop. And in the religious world, mosaic tiling was commonly used in many areas of the church. From the entrance vestibule to the reception hallway to the church kitchens. Depending on the size of the church and the period in which it was built, even the cloakroom and bathrooms would have featured Victorian tiling designs.
Sadly, for so many reasons ranging from heavy foot traffic every Sunday to simple aging over the years, these once magnificent mosaic floors in God’s house have been left in a poor state of repair.
At Were Tiling, we feel it is our duty to help restore as many of Britain’s most impressive mosaic flooring designs in as close to original state as possible. Whether that be in a grand Victorian home, a store front or at your parish church.
While there is huge variation in the age of construction in Churches across Scotland, those built around the Georgian period were erected during some of the golden ages of British design and feature beautiful architectural and interior design detailing that simply does not exist in modern building construction.
Geometric hallways, mosaic entrance ways and a near infinite number of Mosaic designs for rooms covering everything from vestibules to hallways featured in these historic and religious buildings across the whole country.
As with all historic floors however, after over 100 years, the problems come from the substrate supporting the tiles in one form or another. It can be the structural movement of the building, movement from supporting joists or floorboards, or damp and water ingress into the substrate or wood. In the main it comes from the fact that the mortar beds were put directly onto floorboards and across joists and not overboard as is common practice today. Over the last 100 years the substrate has moved because of the settlement of the building, the wooden joists and floorboards expand and contracts over time and that movement leads the Mortar bed to move and crack and then tiles become damaged, chipped or cracked.
We are Were Tiling and we are one of Scotland’s leading specialist conservation and contemporary mosaic tiling experts. We are one of the few genuinely qualified tilers who have the experience, skills and patience to work on the proper layout and restoration of geometric tiling.
We are incredibly proud of the work that we do because we are helping to restore and preserve some of the most significant interior decorating features of Georgian, Edwardian and Victorian tiling. Over the decades, these once proud tiling features have fallen into disrepair, suffering from constant foot traffic, neglect, rising damp and other water damage and a countless number of other reasons. All of which have added up to the near complete destruction of some of these stunning tiled features on historic and religious buildings.
Our repair and restoration services cover everywhere in Scotland and the North of England and with every restoration project we work on, you will always find a detailed and committed process to the end result. We will always work our hardest to restore original tiling sections and where this is simply not possible, we will move heaven and earth to ensure that the replacement tiles are best colour and style matched so that the completed restoration project is as authentic and original as possible.
If you would like to discuss a restoration tiling project for your historic or religious building, please contact Andrew by calling 07932 716 716 or emailing andrew@were.co.uk
You will always find a polite, friendly and experienced voice at the other end of the phone and we will always try to answer your questions as truthfully and clearly as we can.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Brian from Newcastle We were replacing a carpet in our hall and discovered the original Victorian tiling was still there. Andrew came to our home, looked at the tiling and gave us a quote with no hassle. His attention to detail and careful and methodical approach are clear in the end results. We are so delighted with the work that he has done. We never thought about having a tiled hallway but we are more than delighted with the results and it has increased the value of our home considerably.
Andy from Glasgow We were looking for our Storm Door area and hallway to have a matching contemporary geometric tile design to them. We want a modern take that worked with our period Victorian home. Andrew was one of three tilers we call. He was the only one who took any measurements and really looked at the set up that we wanted. We went Were because they seemed to know what they were talking about and we were impressed with their detailed quote breakdown. It meant we knew exactly what to expect. And the end result - we could not be more happy with the end results. Our hallway looks better than ever.
