Tiling in New Prague

Yes. Every quote from Berge Tile Company is free, and there's no obligation attached to it. The easiest way to start is to text a photo of the space along with rough dimensions — that's usually enough to give you a ballpark the same day. For anything involving a shower, a full bathroom, or a floor in an older home, I'll come look at it in person before quoting, because those are the projects where a photo hides the things that matter: subfloor condition, how far out of level the room is, and whether the existing waterproofing can stay. The written quote you get back is itemized, covers both labor and materials, and is the price you pay.

I do. Berge Tile Company is an owner-operated business, which means the person who quotes your job is the same person who sets the tile and the same person who cleans up at the end. There's no crew rotating through your house and no subcontractor you've never met. That's a deliberate choice. Tile is finish work, and the difference between a good tile job and a bad one comes down to layout decisions made in the first hour and attention to detail in the last one. Both are hard to delegate. The practical trade-off is that I take on fewer jobs at a time, so scheduling sometimes takes a couple of weeks.

Berge Tile Company handles residential tile work across six areas: custom tile showers, bathroom tiling, kitchen backsplashes, floor tiling, custom pattern installation, and tile repair. In practice that ranges from a one-day backsplash to a full shower built from the studs out with waterproofing, niches and a bench. I work with porcelain, ceramic, natural stone, marble and glass tile, and I install heated floor systems. I don't do countertop fabrication, cabinetry or general remodeling — I'm a tile setter, and I'd rather do one trade properly than four adequately.

Most custom tile showers I build fall between $4,000 and $6,500. Where a specific project lands depends on four things: the size of the enclosure, the tile you pick, the pattern it's laid in, and how far the job is from New Prague. A standard-size shower in a straightforward layout with mid-range porcelain sits toward the lower end. A larger enclosure, natural stone, a herringbone or mosaic pattern, a bench and multiple niches will push toward the upper end — mostly in labor, because complex patterns multiply the number of individually fitted cuts. A good share of the cost is work you will never see: demolition, substrate prep, and the waterproofing that goes in before any tile.

Yes, and it's some of my favorite work. Older homes around New Prague and the south metro almost never have a level subfloor or a square room, and tile is the least forgiving material you can put in one. The fix isn't to tile over the problem — it's to correct the substrate first, with self-leveling underlayment or shimming, before any tile is set. Skipping that step is why tile in old houses cracks along a seam a year or two later. One project I completed was a loft conversion in an 1860s building where almost no wall or floor was level. That job included a heated tile floor and a full shower where a laminate insert used to be.

Yes — always, and this is the single most important thing to get right in a bathroom. Tile and grout are not waterproof. Water passes through grout lines, and the only thing standing between that water and your framing is the waterproofing layer underneath. A shower that was tiled directly over green board or untreated backer will look perfect for a year or two and then fail from the inside, usually showing up as a soft spot in the floor or a stain on the ceiling below. Every shower I build gets a proper waterproofing system installed and inspected before a single tile goes up.

Most kitchen backsplashes take one to two days. A standard bathroom floor is typically two to three days including prep and grouting. A custom tile shower usually runs four to seven days, because waterproofing needs to cure before tile goes on and grout needs to cure before the shower can be used. Floors in older homes take longer than the same square footage in a newer build, since the subfloor usually needs leveling first. Because I work solo, I finish one job before starting the next — your project won't sit half-done while I'm somewhere else.

Loose shower tile almost always means water got behind it. The usual causes are failed waterproofing, grout that cracked and was never sealed, or old silicone at the corners that let water track behind the tile. Whether it can be repaired depends on what's underneath. If the substrate is still sound and only a few tiles have released, it's a straightforward repair. If the backer board behind it is soft or the waterproofing has failed across a larger area, patching it just hides the problem until it spreads.