My 1st Job Wood Plank Tiles - Questions? - Tile Advice

[aoused]

Hi,

I have a few questions I hope you guys can help me with?

I move into my new build house in a few months. We’ve decided to tile the en-suite and bathroom on the first floor, a total of about 6m2. As far as I am aware the floor will be chipboard of some sort.

I’ve never tiled but my dad who will be helping me has done a few floors.

I have purchased some Larvik Coffee 900x225mm wood effect plank tiles from Topps Tiles. We have also purchased some BAL ash grout.

I am intending to use 6mm Hardiebacker board, is this suitable for my use case? Do I need to apply waterproofing to the board?

I am going to use grey BAL SPF above and below the board. Is this suitable? I think I should be not using a rapid set (for more pot time) but my knowledge ends there.

I am intending to use some wedges from eBay (Shmox). What spacing? The bloke at the shop suggested 3mm.

Which type of trowel should I use for the tiles? 10mm U?

I was initially going to leave the toilet and sink in but they look easy to remove. The bath will be sealed in so won’t be coming out... Am I ok to tile slightly under it (say, one tile width) and the seal the bath panel with silicone?

Hope that’s not too many questions!!

 

[aoused]

(2nd time replying due to forum issues!)

I ended up doing the tiling in my bathroom and en-suite, pics of bathroom attached. I'll attach some of the en-suite when I get the toilet in (which I'm happier with as I got the tiles arranged more 'randomly'). It went reasonably well and I learnt a lot doing it.

In the bathroom I started with a whole tile on the left and worked to the right. I did this to avoid cutting the tiles along the long length but also because the toilet didn't line up with the centre line anyway so it looked odd. In the en-suite I tiled from my centre line (to avoid having a sliver tile on one side too).

Lessons learnt:

1) Cleanliness is very important, having to buy a Bosch multitool grout bit to chase the lines out and a nylon cup brush to get ride of blobs of adhesive was annoying. I think having proper tiling sponges would have made this easier (I only forked out for one when it came to grouting).

2) Once it goes 'off', rapid set goes off bloody quickly. When laying my last Hardibacker the adhesive seemed to go off between the bucket and troweling out. I'm not confident it flattened properly so I banged in 40 screws and hoped for the best (it doesn't appear to move when I jumped on it nor does it sound hollow when I knock it). I had to chip it out of my bucket when I went to wash up!

3) I got away with almost no lippage but I did get a few tiles wrong when I used adhesive which was too wet causing things to 'sink' a little. Grout appears to have covered it up.

4) Resist the urge to sponge the grout too soon. Had to redo a bit of it because the lines were too deep. I also have some very slight colour variations presumably from getting the grout wet while it was going off.

5) Porcelain is bloody hard. I achieved best results in cutting with a 115mm Premtool angle grinder blade. I also had to buy a 6mm bit that goes on my angle grinder after hours of trying to drill through laid tiles with a bit from toolstation that said it was for porcelain! I think the angle grinder bit is about dead after 10 holes though (the wax in the middle is leaking I think).

6) Get the tool for Hardiebacker. Cutting it with my angle grinder was a bad idea - sooo much dust (I had a mask!)

7) It doesn't matter how many times you lay out tiles, measure and cut, when it comes to laying them, they don't fit - I should have used battens and done the straight rows first!

To answer my own questions

1) I used 6mm Hardiebacker, it worked well. I didn't waterproof it but I did silicone the edges and tape/feather the joints

2) BAL SPF was too expensive. I used Topps Tiles rapid set flexible for the board and slow set for the tiles.

3) I used the 3mm wedge system from Pro Tiler Tools. Very good. I snapped a few of the t-pieces off though.

4) I used my dad's trowels. 6mm notch for the board, 10mm notch for the tiles. Seemed to work ok. I back-buttered and when I had to (fight to) lift a tile for one reason or another I could see I got really good adhesion.

5) I tiled about one tile width under the bath, up to the bath legs. Then used a two part MDF bath panel siliconed in. Seems to be ok. Doesn't get used often (the bath) so time will tell if this works.

 

[aoused]

P.S. I'm not sure about the white silicone on the bottom of the toilet and pedestal. I'm wondering if the grey I've got (to match the grout) will look better.