Constructive Criticism

Well, that was pretty much the response I was expecting to yesterday’s post. In hind sight, No Grout would not be a good idea. I guess what I really mean are no grout lines that are really visible. If the tiles are butted up against each other there will always be thin gaps here and there. The tolerances on tile just aren’t that good. That would be smooshed with grout.

I must say this has been very, very helpful. It is all a part of the process. You come up with an idea. You play with it. The idea gets changed and modified, and hopefully you end up with a workable plan. In this case the plan starts with the expected results: A Vintage Looking Tiled Bathroom. From there I work backwards, looking at available resources, and ways to achieve that look.

As an example, I’ll point once again to the beautiful tile floor in the foyer of Chicago 2 Flat. I hope Jocelyn doesn’t mind me using her as an example. Anyway, click on the picture to enlarge it and look at it closely. If there are grout lines in between each tile, they are not that noticeable. Also, last week I was talking to a friend who was part of a salvage team that took a bunch of subway tile out of a local 19th Century hotel a few years back. He told me that those tiles were butted up against the other and there were no visible grout lines. I even asked him if it looked like they used grout and he said, if they did there wasn’t much.



As someone pointed out in one of the comments, by the 1920s mosaic tiles came on a backer mesh just as they do today. Someone else said the boarders came with a paper face glued to the front. This paper was remove after the boarder was set. I, of course, am doing an 1890s bathroom, so it seems it would not be appropriate to have uniform 1/8th or ¼-inch grout lines. I could be wrong, maybe there are grout lines, but I just don’t see them. A 1/8th inch grout would probably look nice. After I posted yesterday, I remembered someone else on one of the old house forums said they used pennies as spacers for the tiles. Another idea would be toothpicks.

I was very intrigued by the paper faced tile boarders. This gave me a great idea. I bolted awake in bed last night about 4:00 in the morning and had trouble getting back to sleep. I could make my own boarders before I put them down. In the Chicago 2 Flat tile, those boarders look to be about 10-inches wide (10, 1-inch square tiles). I could take pieces of cardboard about a foot wide and build my boarders on those. I could make a wooden frame out of 1X2 stock and build them like puzzles on the cardboard, maybe 3 or 4 feet at a time. Once the tiles are in place in the frame I would lay down a sheet of stencil paper, then remove the frame and start another section.

The stencil paper has a sticky side that is a little stickier than a Post-It note. You can pull it up and reuse it many times. I only need about 40-feet of boarder. I could make those up in the evening while I’m watching TV. When I go to lay the boarder, I would just slide it off the cardboard, gently smoosh it down, and then peel off the paper. Just like old times. Of course, I’d have to even them out a bit after their in place.

As for the field tile, I think someone mentioned they took an hour to do 2 square feet by hand. I can see the first few feet being tedious and time consuming. After a while though, I’m sure the pace would quicken as I reached a stride. After the boarders are in that leaves me roughly 50 sq ft of field to do. Even if I was only able to do 2 sq ft and hour, that’s still only 25 hours of work. In my mind that is very doable. Most days, when I was painting the house, I was able to get in 3 to 5 hours of work before dinner. Considering I could work longer on weekends, I can see doing the whole floor in a week!

So that leaves the mortar/thin-set debate. Right now the room has a 1-inch thick sub floor. This is the original plank sub floor and the boards are a full inch thick. They rest of 16-inch OC joists. The one transition from tile to other floors is in to the kitchen. That is a 7/8th-inch thick wood floor. There will be a marble threshold between the tile floor and the wood floor. The tile is ¼-inch thick, and if I put down a ¼-inch backer board, that would leave me 3/8-of an inch for a mortar bed. All told then, I would have an inch and a quarter floor on 16-inch 2X12 joists -That is plenty firm - and then the mortar bed with the tile. With the use of screeds I should be able to get a smooth bed. The difference in height between the kitchen and bath would be the additional mortar from the 3/16th-inch notched trowel. Extremely minor.

Well, thank you all. I’m more excited about this than ever now. As for the rotten 1950s walls, it’s hard to say how much of that can be blamed on thin grout lines. Perhaps is was a poorly done job….well, it did last 50 years, so maybe it was too bad. Let’s face it, a lot of bathrooms done in the 70s and 80s are already shot and being ripped out.

The last thing I did want to touch on was this quote.

The low cost of labor and the relative newness and lack of understanding about the physical properties of concrete didn’t hurt either. Backer board, latex additives, plywood sub floors, kiln dried joist material, ect have come a long way to rendering thick bed jobs not necessary for most typical flat floors that aren’t in a shower.

First, as far as I know, concrete was invented by the ancient Greeks and has been in use for thousands of years. I know the Romans made extensive use of. As for the debate of old building materials and methods versus new, well, who knows. I do know that my house was built in 1895 and even after decades of neglect it is structurally in far better shape than most houses built in the last 40 years. I will take any wager that my old redwood plank sub floors and joists will out last any plywood sub floor and kiln dried joist, any day of the week.

There are pros and cons to both methods of laying tile. You said, “…have come a long way to rendering thick bed jobs not necessary for most typical flat floors that aren’t in a shower”. You seem to be implying that the mortar bed method is better, it’s just not needed. Considering what I’m doing in the bathroom, this seems to be a better method.

Much more research is needed.

Edit
I just found this discussion on "mud bed" tile installations...

Mud Beds