Ever tiled a kitchen work top ?

[thevinnyofoz]

Hello

Just been asked if I would tile a work top in a kitchen, the work top is the laminated chip board type, not marble or natural stone. I don't know of any adhesive that would stick to this type of surface, anyone done this before ?

 

[tilestars]

turn the work top over so the bottom and sq side are at the front ,over clad with 6mm backer board then tile as normal, some customers get a piece of architrave to hide the front other fit a nosing tile / quadrant tile to finish front edge i would recommend epoxy grout if its a food prep area

 

[Perry]

Yes lots over the years i use PCI primer 303 then nanolite but used to use an ardex primer think it was called ardion 51

 

[LM_Terry]

Yes lots over the years i use PCI primer 303 then nanolite but used to use an ardex primer think it was called ardion 51

I used the ardex primer back when I tiled my brohters kitchen many many moons ago...havent got much experience with the PCI stuff nowadays...is it the best going?

 

[Perry]

i use quite a lot of it its great lol but i dont realy use any others nowdays other than bal fastflex so idont know what else is about

 

[tfs]

I was going to do my own own worktop just over a year ago.

The way I was going to do it was;

1. Replace existing work top with 18mm ply.

2. sheet over with backer board (adhesive and screws)

3. Tile over

4. Grout with epoxy grout

If you cant get a bull nose trim to match the tile you could try and shape your own from off cuts of tile. As an alternative you could just put timber trim (My prefference would be OAK) on the edge of your new wortop and seal with a wax or oil.

If you use an OAK trim, I would reccomend using a product named 'Patina' it is a gel that you rub into the timber. It is normally use on boat decks etc. It gives a natural finnish and a good seal

If timber is out of the question you could probably pick up a metal trim somewhere.

 

[Colour Republic]

turn the work top over so the bottom and sq side are at the front ,over clad with 6mm backer board then tile as normal, some customers get a piece of architrave to hide the front other fit a nosing tile / quadrant tile to finish front edge i would recommend epoxy grout if its a food prep area

This would only ever work if you had a straight length of worktop with no cutouts round any protruding walls and the hob/sink cut outs were dead centre of the worktop and the worktop had not been scribed to the wall and the worktop had not suffered any water damage. in addition the finished thickness of the worktop would be close to 60m after tiling, you would have problems with the fixings on the sink and hob, you'd have to router the worktop to take these. Once you've taken all the labour costs to do such work it would be cheaper to install a new base for your tiling

 

[Colour Republic]

Just thought, also the underside of most laminate worktops have a paperbacking over the chipboard. I wouldn't have thought that is an ideal surface to tile on

 

[Rob Z]

Hi Vinny, before natural stone slab counters came so far down in price here, I did a lot of bartops, kithen counters and bath vanities in tile and dimensional stone. I've done them with just about every conceivable substrate-over two layers of plywood, over membranes, over Ditra, over Denshield, over cement backer board, over metal reinforced mud beds (screeds), and over SLC. The one thing I never did was go over the existing laminate top. I know some guys did/do it by either putting backer board on or sticking Ditra to the laminate with a high-stickum adhesive such as Mapei Kerabond/Kerlastic, or with Laticrete 317/333.

My concern with reusing the existing underlayment is that stuff usually is funky around the sink and the dishwasher.