Preparing Walls and Floor in Bathroom (newbie)

[dfuk121]

Hi, I am about to embark on tiling the bathroom of our first home and want to do it right. I've got a few questions I'm hoping you can help with :smilewinkgrin: Pre-text: The bathroom is in a 1970's house. Walls are concrete and the floor is covered with tongue-and-groove floorboards. The bathroom is tiny measuring around 1.8m square :bigcry:. It has a wide window on the rear wall. We are tiling the floor and walls completely. Walls The bathroom walls are currently tiled but some of the tiles have fallen off and they have been poorly fitted in the first place (uneven, bulging, etc.). We are going to strip back the tiles to the walls as these don't provide a good enough foundation in my opinion. We've taken one tile off to find the plaster has also come off. The wall behind is concrete (1970's house). From reading this forum I believe I can either:

1. Re-plaster the original concrete wall > tank > affix tiles
2. Dot and dab affix backerboard to the concrete > tank > affix tiles

This is our only bathroom so time-saving is more important than cost saving (though we are on a budget!). I'm concerned that plastering will take so long to dry. Any advice here is appreciated but my main question is which method would you advise is the best? Floor The floorboards look to be sound. I don't really want to lift the floorboards and replace them with ply as it sounds like quite a big job but if that's the best way then so be it. From reading this forum I believe I can either:

1. Affix backerboard to the floor > tank > affix tiles
2. Lift floorboards > lay WBP Ply (18mm?) >lay backerboard(?) > tank > affix tiles

In (2), I'm not sure whether backerboard is required on-top of WBP ply or whether a thicker grade of ply could be used instead. Any advice here is appreciated but my main question is which method would you advise is the best? Adhesives I've been told to stick to one brand for adhesives and grouts, with BAL being recommended. I've seen a lot of Mapei advertising on the forum so would possibly suggest that must be a good brand to be featured here. Are there any other brands I should be looking at; and are there any pros/cons of using either BAL or Mapei products? Many thanks for your help in advance. Apologies for all the questions. Dave

 

[White Room]

Ceramic tiles, 40x25cm 🙂

Plasterboard would be fine for the tiles..