Metal tilestrip - to butt or not to butt.

[stripestripe]

Hi, I'm using a metal tilestrip to border/frame/separate a vertical charcoal-coloured feature tile strip in an otherwise white tiled bathroom.

The strip looks a bit like this:
Homelux Narrow Tilestrip 6 Silver Effect (L)1830mm x (H)10mm, HTSN SI 6
It has slight ridges down the side, where the tile edge would butt up to.

It obviously looks better if the metal strip is butted up to both the white and charcoal tiles, but how could I ensure a watertight seal? Clear Silicon as its being put in? One of these vertical strips is halfway down the length of a shower-bath so it does need to be sealed somehow...

Or should I just leave space for a groutline either side?

Cheers for reading!

 

[Dan]

That's a pencil strip and you would grout either side of one of those. No need to Silicon.

Note that adhesive and grout commonly used in bathrooms (cement-based) is not water tight, just water resistant. So water can pass through the products but never break them down. So if you did Silicon around the pencil strip, water would still make its way behind the rest of the tiles anyway.

If you're concerned about waterproofing the shower area, use a 'tanking kit' to 'tank' your shower wall upto shower head height, and then tile over that, and it doens't matter if water gets behind the tiles then.

 

[stripestripe]

Cheers. I've tanked the shower area (and beyond) with Mapei Mapegum and tape. Using Mapei Keraflex addy and Kerapoxy grout.

 

[Dan]

If the strip comes with a protective layer, leave it on until you have grouted. A lot of those pencil strips can scratch if you're rough with the grout and washing the grout off. That particular one is plastic with a 'chrome' effect layer, you can take the layer off altogether with grout and it ends up white. Not a good effect.

Make sure you take pictures for us. It sounds like a nice job.

 

[DHTiling]

I would leave a grout joint between the strip and tile etc... 1 to 2 mm is fine..