Joining tiles with wood and finishing for a matwell?

[acs]

Hello, I've just finished tiling most of my hallway, with the tiles being laid on self-levelling compound on concrete. However, I'm now faced with two problems and, as a beginner, haven't had much luck finding answers to either, so please help!

1. The ceramic tiles meet wood (parquet) flooring at our living room. How do you best join tiles and wood to make the appearance appealing? The tiles are approx 5mm higher than the wooden floor.

1. I have a PVC front door which won't clear the tiles and so think the best solution is to install a mat-well. My question here is how you join ceramic tiles to the mat-well (I want to protect the edges of the tiles from being chipped)? I found mention of mat-well 'frames' on the net but they seem fairly rare so wondered if there was a better known solution?

Many thanks in advance for any help/advice, regards, Alan.

[John]

For my two pennyworth, and there will be other ways! :-

1) I would make a piece of tapered hardwood, oak for an oak parquet floor, to take up the height difference over say a couple of inches (50mm in French). Stick it down, and make the joint to the tiles with silicon rubber to give a flexible joint in case the wood tries to move, which it probably will. If you stick it down with a couple of weights on it over night you shouldnt need any screws or nails.

2) you could surround the mat well with brass angle, you can buy this from the likes of B&Q, but the last time i did one like this we got some brass sheet and flanged it with a mallet over a block of wood in the vice! It should be mitred at the corners, so make sure the mat well is square or the mitres wont be 45 degrees.

2A) That is the way for a victorian hhouse, if you are very contemporary, you could use stainless steel angle (and stainless steel screws to secure it) or if you want to save a few bob use aluminium angle bar, but it wont last as long as stainless or brass.

2B) Or you might be able to use proprietry stair nosing mitred around the mat well?You can get this with a wear surface made of something like car brake lining matreial.

Good luck !

John

[malc]

I bought some aluminium rightangle section strips from Screwfix for not very much money. It's dead easy to mitre them using a mitre saw with the appropriate blade. I expect somewhere would sell stainless strips too.

[acs]

Thanks John and Malc,

(2) I picked up a brass angle (thanks for the new lingo!) from B&Q today which looks great, thanks. How should I secure it to the tiles though - some kind of adhesive?

(1) I think I'll go for a consistent contemporary look with another brass angle and bridge the height gap with a rubber wedge.

Thanks again for your help, regards, Alan.

[malc]

You could use impact adhesive or possibly epoxy. Failing that some brass screws and rawlplugs drilled into the floor. It's going to take a fair bit of pounding so it needs to be a good fix. I wouldn't recommend No More Nails as I don't think it would be strong enough. And whatever you do do not use the B&Q version it is crap, really, really crap.

[malc]

A good point and I wish I'd thought of it.

[John]

My thoughts too, i would use a good adhesive, roughen the contact face of the brass first with abrasive paper. Epox and brass is OK, but silicon rubber bath sealant probably as good as anything for the brass to wood / brass to tiles joint.

Now the trick, dont try fastening through the tiles!

Instead drill the VERTICAL face of the angle bar, countersink it, and screw into the edge of the floorboard/ well surround/or whatever you call it. I would cut back the end grain floorboards (floorboard saw, baby circular saw, or ideally a "Fein Multimaster" if you have or can scrounge one), and fit a neat piece of timber with the grain the correct way to screw into.

Doing it this way you dont have the screws visible.

Given the choice, i would make all the load bearing wood joints with a polyurethane wood adhesive, most good builders merchants, or Axminster power tools (Mail order) keep Titebond polyurethane which is very good. Its almost as strong as epoxy, and a lot safer, but dont get it on your hands or it will only come off naturaly after a week or so. (if you get epoxy on your skin you run the risk of getting cancer).

I hope that helps.

John

[acs]

Thanks again both. Want to make sure I've got this right - I got a piddly 10mm brass angle from B&Q earlier because there's only 10mm of depth tile to concrete floor but didn't consider that there should be a wood frame to the well (my blissful ignorance).

I''ll probably go with the 10mm angle unless you think it'd be better to have a larger, visible wooden frame and then a 10mm or larger brass frame:

1. attach the (less than 10mm!) wood frame to the concrete floor with some kind of adhesive, making the wood-to-wood joins with polyurethane wood adhesive
2. drill. countersink and screw vertical angle edge to wood frame
3. seal the wood (frame), tile and brass trio with silicone

And I think we're there!

[John]

I think thats about right Alan,

You can stick wood to concrete with polywatsits glue, if the wood frame is going to be a totaly invisible frame, jusr a ground for the screws, it can be of decent cheap hardwood, and screwed DOWN into the subfloor as well for rigidity, then the angle screwed ACROSS into the wood.

I would make the angle a bit bigger, depending on the thickness of doormat you intend, so there is a nice silicon rubber fillet at the base, and you can seal the surface of the concrete of the well base (with a proprietry, or just some PVA and water) to stop future dust.

Seems OK to me.

Cheers John

[acs]

Thanks for all your help John, will give this a go soon as I can.

Have a great new year, regards, Alan.