Tile bathroom with Travertine

[Peterc2609]

Hi all,

Bought a load of travertine to tile my bathroom Walls and floor.

I've taken all Of the old cheap ceramic tiles of the wall and underneath is the tile adhesive on plasterboard.

In some areas the plasterboard has come away exposing the brick.

If I was to just get a mate to skim the Walls to make them straight and smooth would it be ok for the tiler to tile the travertine straight onto, or would I need to ply the wall or something?

 

[Daz]

I've only skimmed this thread but IMO unskimmed plasterboard will still not be strong enough for natural stone plus 4kg / sqm for adhesive & grout. Overboard with tile backer boards including mechanical fixing before continuing.

Good luck,

Daz

 

[Peterc2609]

Daz,

Will it be ok putting the backer boards onto uneven brickwork?

What are mechanical fixings?

I did think about plasterboards, but the fact that someone said they could support 32kg and the tiles would be 31kg scared me a bit, so think I would prefer the backer boards.

 

[Daz]

Hi Peter,

My preference would be to "solid bed" fix the backer boards, i.e. trowel the brickwork with rapid set flexible adhesive using a 12mm square notch trowel and fully bed the backer boards. Then plug and screw the boards at 150mm centres to be sure.

Daz