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billl_gw

Tile Question - substrate

Billl
13 years ago

This is really for a kitchen, but the tile pro's seem to be more active on this board.

We have a 100 year old home. Obviously, nothing is straight or level at this point. The house has an unheated dirt basement, so everything "breaths" and seems to move more than a modern house due to changes in temp and humidity. We have tiled 2 bathrooms using subfloor, thinset, cement board, tape joints, thinset, tile. So far, no issues with either room but both were done with small tiles - 1"hex and 1x1 and 1x2 weave pattern.

Now, we are getting ready to renovate the kitchen and are hoping to use larger tiles. We've got several issues.

1) Sloping floor. Should we try to correct this in the framing/subfloor, use a self-leveling compound, or other? There are several layers of floor to remove, so I don't know exactly how much of a slope there is, but I suspect about 1" over 16ft.

2) Movement. Is the thinset/cementboard combo enough or should I be looking at decoupling membranes? If a membrane, do I still do cementboard?

3) Non-square room. We are hoping to use rectangular tiles in a running bond pattern. We'll have about 14ft of cabinetry directly across from the main entrance, but that wall isn't 100% parallel to the entry wall. One (or both) sides will be out of square. Any tips for visually disguising this?

We plan to live in this house for the rest of our lives, so I'm looking to do things right the first time. I'm on board with complete overkill and some extra expense if it is a permanent solution.

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