Ceramic Tiles For Life

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Ceramic tiles can either make a terrific, long-lasting floor or an expensive nightmare, depending on how you deal with them. Few home improvement issues are as black and white as this one, and that’s why it pays to know what’s involved before you dive into ceramics. And don’t think that hiring a professional necessarily gets you off the hook. Solid knowledge pays off in solid results, whether you lay the tiles yourself or pay someone to do it.

Installing ceramic tiles isn’t technically complicated, but there are make-or-break details involved in the process. What you'll learn here is my favourite approach to the job: creation of a traditional mortar-bed base followed by tile installation on site mixed, mortar-type setting compound. There’s more than one surface on which you can install a ceramic tile floor, but I favour a mortar bed for two reasons. First, I know it well from personal installation experience over the last 12 years. Second, I’ve never seen a mortar-bed approach deliver anything other than stable, rock-solid results over the long haul. You can count on it. If you follow the steps you’ll read here, you’ll have crack-free tiles and bulletproof grout. There are easier methods of tile installation, but none offer better results.

Phase#1: A Solid Foundation
The first thing to understand is that the reliability of any ceramic tile floor depends almost entirely on an absolutely rigid base. That's why I'll devote most of this article to this part of the job. If there’s flex in the floor structure -- even a little -- tiles and grout eventually break loose. Guaranteed. That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. Repair of such a floor is only a stop-gap measure. New tiles and grout will also come loose in time because the underlying problem remains -- a flexible support structure underneath an inflexible floor surface. And since you can’t adequately fix an inadequate ceramic floor after the fact, you’ve got to be prepared to roll up your sleeves and do it right the first time.

Avoiding trouble means going beyond what’s normally adequate as a subfloor for non-ceramic flooring options, and there are a handful of choices for this. Some ceramic tile professionals add a layer of 5/8-inch plywood on top of the existing subfloor, before fastening tiles directly to this new wood using an adhesive rated for the job. Others swear by a layer of fibre-reinforced cement board on the subfloor instead of ply, screwed in place before the ceramics go down. In my experience the traditional mortar bed installation is more reliable than either of these options, though it’s also substantially more work. 

Putting one down involves applying a 1 to 1 1/2-inch thick bed of smooth, reinforced, site-poured mortar on a wooden subfloor. This mortar is allowed to fully cure before tiles are secured with a setting-type compound before grouting. Installing a mortar bed involves five distinct steps:

Waterproofing the Subfloor
The purpose of this first step is to prevent the dry, wooden subfloor from sucking moisture out of the mortar as it cures. Subfloor waterproofing also offers the advantage of waterproofing the whole tile installation, even without the application of a grout sealer liquid.

Start by rolling a layer of tar-based foundation coating onto your subfloor after securing it with screws driven at least 1-inch into the underlying floor joists. Next, roll out overlapping layers of 15 lbs. roofing felt onto the tar while it’s still wet. Secure this tar paper with staples driven every 12 inches along edges.

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