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Hello all and happy new year!
I decided to walk away from the bathroom project i started many many weeks ago due to the much reported problems i had being as this was my first but not last tiling venture.
Well just to recap, I over boarded my bathroom chipboard floor with 12mm ish (can't quite remember)ply, fitted 10mm marmox insulation boards with adhesive, installed UFH matt then SLC over the top. A very solid floor after screwing the chipboard floor down so now rock solid! Unfortunately the SLC didn't go brilliantly (first go at it) and wasn't as flat as it should have been but at least the UFH was protected.
I then went on to tiling with 2mm grout lines, deciding to install all the full tiles leaving the cuts for the following day. Again being my first attempt at tiling, i didn't pay anywhere near enough attention to preventing tile lippage and boy did i pay the price - it looked terrible. So..... i pulled up 80% of the tiles, leaving a handful of tiles down which i deemed the very best of a bad bunch. I was left with a very exhausting job of removing all the leftover tile adhesive, without damaging the SLC and ultimately the UFH. It took about 10 hours! That was the final straw, i had had enough and decided to pay someone to finish it of. Butt there was a big problem, i couldn't find a single person to finish off what i had started, no matter what money i was prepared to pay. Nightmare!!! So i gave up and decided to wait until the new year and have another go and here i am....
I have now completed laying all the floor tiles and overall I'm extremely happy with the results. Is it a professional finish? - probably not, is there tile lippage? - yes but noting above 1mm apart from a couple of tiles that could be better but what i have realized is that preparation of the sub-floor is everything in this game and without vast experience in overcoming the shortfalls of the prep work you are not going to get it 100% perfect. Trying to tile around the odd tile left down from the previous attempt made it almost impossible sometimes to match the height levels of every tile around it so i had to compromise.
I have one tile in particular which stands out as the one i would like to remove and try again but i would like to hear peoples views on this before i do. The problem is mainly down to the SLC being inconsistent (where i started the next pour of SLC) along the tile (600mm x 400mm) and the fact that the tile next to it is sitting relatively low. The outcome is that i had to compromise with the lippage at either end of the tile and annoyingly i have 2mm lippage on one corner of the tile, running about 100mm down the width of the tile and then it aligns up and then sits 1mm below the adjacent tile. This was the only tile i had to use a very shallow bed of adhesive to the point where I'm concerned with strength of the hold as i suspect i don't have anywhere near 100% coverage. It's not in a walking area and i have made lots of movement over it and so far its been OK after 1 week. So what can be done? Ideally if there is a tool/machine out their i can use to rub down this tile then that would be fantastic or is it a case of pulling it up, and lowering the SLC, trying not to damage the UFH. Or leave it although you pro's don't like to recommend this i bet.
Next stage is grouting so any good pointers for a beginner would be fantastic.
I decided to walk away from the bathroom project i started many many weeks ago due to the much reported problems i had being as this was my first but not last tiling venture.
Well just to recap, I over boarded my bathroom chipboard floor with 12mm ish (can't quite remember)ply, fitted 10mm marmox insulation boards with adhesive, installed UFH matt then SLC over the top. A very solid floor after screwing the chipboard floor down so now rock solid! Unfortunately the SLC didn't go brilliantly (first go at it) and wasn't as flat as it should have been but at least the UFH was protected.
I then went on to tiling with 2mm grout lines, deciding to install all the full tiles leaving the cuts for the following day. Again being my first attempt at tiling, i didn't pay anywhere near enough attention to preventing tile lippage and boy did i pay the price - it looked terrible. So..... i pulled up 80% of the tiles, leaving a handful of tiles down which i deemed the very best of a bad bunch. I was left with a very exhausting job of removing all the leftover tile adhesive, without damaging the SLC and ultimately the UFH. It took about 10 hours! That was the final straw, i had had enough and decided to pay someone to finish it of. Butt there was a big problem, i couldn't find a single person to finish off what i had started, no matter what money i was prepared to pay. Nightmare!!! So i gave up and decided to wait until the new year and have another go and here i am....
I have now completed laying all the floor tiles and overall I'm extremely happy with the results. Is it a professional finish? - probably not, is there tile lippage? - yes but noting above 1mm apart from a couple of tiles that could be better but what i have realized is that preparation of the sub-floor is everything in this game and without vast experience in overcoming the shortfalls of the prep work you are not going to get it 100% perfect. Trying to tile around the odd tile left down from the previous attempt made it almost impossible sometimes to match the height levels of every tile around it so i had to compromise.
I have one tile in particular which stands out as the one i would like to remove and try again but i would like to hear peoples views on this before i do. The problem is mainly down to the SLC being inconsistent (where i started the next pour of SLC) along the tile (600mm x 400mm) and the fact that the tile next to it is sitting relatively low. The outcome is that i had to compromise with the lippage at either end of the tile and annoyingly i have 2mm lippage on one corner of the tile, running about 100mm down the width of the tile and then it aligns up and then sits 1mm below the adjacent tile. This was the only tile i had to use a very shallow bed of adhesive to the point where I'm concerned with strength of the hold as i suspect i don't have anywhere near 100% coverage. It's not in a walking area and i have made lots of movement over it and so far its been OK after 1 week. So what can be done? Ideally if there is a tool/machine out their i can use to rub down this tile then that would be fantastic or is it a case of pulling it up, and lowering the SLC, trying not to damage the UFH. Or leave it although you pro's don't like to recommend this i bet.
Next stage is grouting so any good pointers for a beginner would be fantastic.
