How difficult is tiling a floor?

dirtychinchilla said:
Obviously not your fault, but this whole thing is winding me up. Our new build house has posh laminate in the upstairs bathrooms. I want tiles. I don't like laminate. But it's so thin that if we did put in tiles, it would be raised a couple of cm, as you say, from the carpet on the landing. Is this normal? I don't understand why they wouldn't have made provision for this. Or is it a case of putting something under your carpet to raise it up??
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In practice a slight step next to a carpet is not noticeable really, get a angled door strip that grips down to the carpet. A decent underlay + carpet will be verging on 15mm+ anyway, so tiles at say 6mm of hardibacker, 2mm adheisve, 10mm tile isnt really far off.
 
200sols said:
In practice a slight step next to a carpet is not noticeable really, get a angled door strip that grips down to the carpet. A decent underlay + carpet will be verging on 15mm+ anyway, so tiles at say 6mm of hardibacker, 2mm adheisve, 10mm tile isnt really far off.
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Hmm OK. I'm just worried because it's relatively flat between hallway and bathroom, and the bathroom is just this crap stuff. If it's vinyl, it's probably only a few mm thick?
 
Apply the adhesive to the back of the tile, not the floor.
Makes it easier to level it out and creates less mess.

I laid the tiles in my mother's kitchen over 20years ago and they are still there, no cracks, no loose ones.
 
CaNsA said:
Apply the adhesive to the back of the tile, not the floor.
Makes it easier to level it out and creates less mess.

I laid the tiles in my mother's kitchen over 20years ago and they are still there, no cracks, no loose ones.
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Ignore this, trowel the adhesive on the floor, back butter the tiles.
Prep your surface make sure everything's clean and dust free.
 
JRJ said:
Ignore this, trowel the adhesive on the floor,
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I would say ignore that, only because the tilers I use to supply equipment to gave me that advice.
But hey, everyone has their own preference.


inb4 JRJ and the inevitable "i r mad tiler bro, hav been for ages"
 
Tbf I did my tiled bathroom floor and couldn't have imagined the mess/issues with trowling the tiles. Back butter, yes... but no way you'd get an even floor that way?
 
dLockers said:
Tbf I did my tiled bathroom floor and couldn't have imagined the mess/issues with trowling the tiles. Back butter, yes... but no way you'd get an even floor that way?
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I can't stress enough the importance of a 1.5m or 2m spirit level.
 
The correct answer is to adhesive both, you trowel the floor and a very thin layer of adhesive onto the back of the tile and then set the tile. This way you get almost 100% adhesive coverage on the tile and floor. They call it back buttering, trowel the floor and thin layer on tile to ensure good fix. Just buttering the tile and not the floor or wall is a complete bodge tbh.
 
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