Hello! Electrician seeking some tiling advice!

[richardlee]

Hello.

I am an electrician seeking some tiling advise. I live in Deal in Kent and have recently bought a house. I am going to tile the bathroom, I stripped the old tiles off the wall which is old plaster, the house is 1930's, alot of plaster/render came off the wall below the bath height where I guess it has got damp over the years, so I have chopped it all off below this height but it is still on the wall above this and is nice and strong.

So at the moment, most of the walls are covered in old but strong render and plaster but where I have chopped the loose stuff off, I have bare brick. I am going to be fitting travertine tiles all over and wandered if you guys could recommend how best to prep the walls.

1. I was thinking of using some sand and cement on the brick to render the surface level with the old plaster and then tile directly to this, would this be ok?
2. There will be a pumped shower over the bath and was wandering if I should use cement board on this area or whether the original plastered surface will be ok for this.

The old rendering and plaster seems very strong and I'm confident it will hold the tiles, assuming that the surface is suitable.

Thanks for reading my first post!

Richard

 

[DHTiling]

Hello Richard and welcome.

The main worry here is weight limits.

Whilst you have the opportunity to do it, I would strip the walls back to brick and dry line them, travertine on average is around 26 ish kg a mtr and will be fine on that substrate.

The best option is a marmox type board but not as straight forward a fixing method as PB.

 

[richardlee]

Cheers Dave.

As soon as I left work today I got on with removing the rest of the of the old render and stripped both walls back to the brick, filling up 8 rubble sacks in the process.

I have now got the two walls ready for dry lining, the two internal walls still have solid original render and plaster all over but I think that this hasnt suffered, possibly because they are internal.

Was thinking or using standard plasterboard in the 'dry' areas and cement board at the bath/shower area, what do you think?

Also, I will be tiling the floor with 8x8 travertine tiles, the floor is currently floorboards but to save on increasing the floor height and getting a more stable base I was thinking of removing the floorboards and laying plywood, do you think this is a good idea? Not sure what thickness of board to use - what would you recommend?

Cheers Dave.

 

[Alan.P]

Hi Richard, whilst the other walls are solid they will not support the weight of the trav tiles, you can / could either take these back to brick and overboard or just overboard. Using a cement board in the wet areas isn't a fail safe to water damage, water will pass through the boards without them breaking down, that's all. I would plasterboard the lot, tank the wet areas for piece of mind and enjoy the finished result, plus sleep tight.

 

[richardlee]

Thanks Alan.
I tried getting the original stuff off the internal walls but it really doesn't want to shift, the walls seem to be some sort of blockwork so maybe that is why (the original render may key to it better than brick. . .?). Dont want to make a total mess of the wall so still thinking of tiling to it but maybe I should just strip the lot off. I cant decide!

What would you recommend with regards to the floor?

Thanks mate.