Ceramic Tile Backer Board
Posted By admin on November 25, 2010
Ceramic Tile Backer Board

Tile It Yourself
About me, I am a professional wall and floor tiler based in Birmingham UK. Obviously I would prefer it if everybody wanted to pay a professional tradesman (especially me) to do the job, but I know that this option isn't always within everyone's budget. I have had to salvage countless botched Do It Yourself Tiling jobs over the years, and thought that maybe a few simple hints on here may be of help.
WALL TILING
First things first......... make sure that the walls you are going to tile onto are sound! Tiling over old crumbling plaster is not a great start, obviously, and needs to be re-plastered or replaced with plaster board or tile backer boards (such as Hardibacker). Tiling onto existing tiles should be avoided if possible, as you can never be 100% certain of what is underneath them
When tiling onto plaster, prime the walls before tiling - use the primer that is recommended by the supplier of your adhesive, do not use PVA!
Getting kitted out...... for wall tiling you will need a 6mm or 8mm notched trowel, usually a 6mm will be OK for very flat walls and small tiles, but you may find an 8mm better for large tiles or slightly uneven walls. A dry cutter for scoring and snapping ceramic and porcelain tiles when making straight cuts, and an electric wet cutter for making "L" shaped cuts and also for natural stone tiles. A rubber grout float is necessary too, makes things so much easier. As far as adhesive goes, you can use the tubbed adhesive for normal ceramic tiles, but be sure to use one that is waterproof for shower and bath areas. This adhesive dries by dispersion on contact with air, so needs to be left ungrouted for a day or two to set properly. For porcelain, natural stone or large format ceramic tiles you should use cement based bagged adhesive, but avoid rapid setting adhesive for wall tiling. For grout, definitely best to mix powdered grout from a bag, and not use the stuff that acts as both adhesive and grout! Oh...... and you need tile spacers too, the cross type will do nicely.
Getting started....... you really need to start from a perfectly level base, which may not necessarily be the case if you start from, say, the floor or bath. There are a couple of ways of doing this but the easiest way for a novice is to use a spirit level and fix a batten of 2" x 1" timber to the wall (after making sure that your batten is actually straight) at the level of the bottom of the first full tile above your base (e.g. bath or floor), sit your tiles on this batten and leave the bottom row off until the adhesive has set, then remove the batten and individually measure and cut your tiles to fit the space left between the bath/floor and your bottom row of full tiles. Your wall will look best if you centre the tiles on the wall (except if you have a large feature window, when it is usually best to centre the window), try measuring from the centre point and if at the edge you are left with a small cut (less than half a tile) then move the middle tile sideways by half a tile width before fixing, this will then give you more than half a tile at the edges, which looks much better. Start by fixing your centre tile first and work your way out to the walls, complete each row including cuts before moving to the next row up - avoid the temptation to fix the full tiles and leave the cuts until last. Hope this helps. Barney
What is the easiest way to put down cement backer board prior to laying ceramic floor tile?
I've done the hard way - bunches of expensive special screws. I found that to be expensive and time consuming (and therefore back breaking). It seems like it takes just as long to do the backer board as it does to do all the remaining steps with the tile. Can I use nails? If so, what kind? Thinset and nails? The subfloor is plywood with old vinyl tiles, I have no intention of remove the old vinyl tiles first. Please reply if you have personal experience with an alternative. Thanks!
I've done this many times. Use GALVANIZED roofing nails with thinset under the cement board. I've done the screws too and this is WAYYYY easier.
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