Im curious. Why do you want to put tile on top of the brick pavers. Are they damaged. Or do you just not like them. To me your brick pavers sound very impressive.

If its just the color is there some kind of coating or finish you could coat them with instead of doing tile.

$6500.00 (or $14.45 a foot) is a fair price for that service for a 450 sq.ft. area. It is pretty much standard as there is a high demand for that service and not many crews specialize in that type of work, plus the materials they use are costly.

you are talking about not only 450 square feet, but also a depth of 1.25" deep that is a volume of 81000 cubic inches or 47 cubic feet of filler required.

That said, there are more cost effective solutions.

we have used a local concrete man to do the same thing more cost effectively for our custoemrs in the past with issues similar to yours.

Tear out whats needed, prep and scarify the existing concrete, concrete man comes in lays a new layer at, or just below the needed height to get a flush transition with the existing floor surface (you will have to work with them to gigure setting materials and tile thicknesses with onsite heights to determin exact level needed), honor an expansion hoin tat the transition and thats all she wrote ... at a fraction of the cost. Think he also may have anchored some concrete wire to the existing slab also to aid adhesion and prevent warpage ... not too sure about that though.

Remember, this is very important ... its better to be a little low and fill in than to be a little high and have to grind concrete for a fluxh transition.

Stanlie - we aren't wanting to tile over the pavers, we want to remove them first (I should have made that more clear). Our house is 25 years old and had the pavers been taken care of, I would possibly think about keeping them. They were left unsealed for years and years. We had a professional out here to clean them right when we moved in and both guys that quoted it said the grout was so dirty in some places that it would never come clean.

Floorman - thank you for the information. Glad to know that quote is fair. I asked my husbad today if he thought we could talk to a concrete company about doing what you mentioned. I actually called a place and the lady said they couldn't do that over a concrete slab. I thought, why can't you just pour concrete over concrete but I had no idea b/c I am no expert in any of this. Is the plywood/hardibacker a bad idea? Another person mentioned tiling over the pavers as long as the pavers were VERY sound, as sound as the slab, which they are. I question doing that but again, I know nothing about flooring. Thanks for your help!

yes you could make up the distance with plywood, although my choice for a backer material would be Schluter Ditra, which not only provides the rigidity that hardibacker does, but also waterproofing, uncoupling, cleavage, load distribution properties, and is much ligher to work with and easier to install.

Hardibacker is an excellent product ... just not my performance preference.

do not tile over the pavers.

that is a disaster waiting to happen.

it might last and might not.

why take the chance.

floorman-- you missed something-- this is over concrete.

osucowboys-- I'm sorry I didn't get right back to you-- I've been out of town for the last few days. I only see two ways to bring that floor up. One would be extremely expensive, and that would be to use self leveling compound in several pours. The other would be to use a slightly rich drypack mortar (the stuff that's used for building shower floors). It's supposed to have a minimum thickness of 1 1/4", but if you slightly enrich the mix, you can reduce that just a bit, and you'd need to build the floor up 7/8", and I believe that'd be fine with a rich mix.

Thanks for the info Bill. It just got more interesting today when we took off the floor vent and realized the slab is much lower than we thought. Not only are the bricks 1 1/4 inches thick but there is another 1 1 /4 inch of mortar under that. That makes our slab 2 1/2 inches below the top of the pavers. This is beginning to be WAY more than we wanted to spend on the floor but hey, what project doesn't end up being way more!

no i am not missing the concrete bill.

if the user uses plywood over the concrete to get the transition height, I recommended as added insurance for the lateral movement of the wood panels for its uncoupling and cleavage properties, not to mention water resistance.

Plywood over concrete is often used to make up height for a flush transition and is extremely successful if isntalled properly, precautions are taken with the proper pruduct usage, like ditra.

an slc or mud-bed certainly are great options, albiet expensive ones in comparison.

SLC and mud-bed installers are hard to come by and very expensive ... at least in this area.

thats considerably deeper than you thought.

I think that too deep for plywood.

I would definately go with a mud bed if you can find the talent in your area to do it.

if not, consider a SLC such as Ardex K-15 ... a great self leveling cement based product for thicker areas.

Okay-- if it's going to be that deep, drypack mud is the only real way to go. Most people I know that will float mud floors charge about 3.50 a foot for the labor on floating the mud bed. As for materials, you'd need about 4 cubic yards of sand and about 10 bags of portland cement. THe cement should run you about 50-55.00, and the sand depends on who you get it from. I know just in my own area here, there's a HUGE range of prices on sharp masons sand delivered, from 12.00 a yard to 25.00 a yard. If you shop some of the local sand pits, you can save yourself a few bucks. This should give you some idea of how much to expect to pay to float that floor, though.

This sounds like it's going to be a very expensive project...YIKES!
Have you thought about restaining the brick grout darker to unify the color and then resealing the pavers?? It would cost a whole lot less.....Just a thought, Sue