I'm about to put floor tiles in the house entrance and want to inset a door mat into the tiles. Are there any pre-fabricated mat frames available, or do I need to fabricate something with aluminium tile edging?
Dave
Dunno, but consider more than a doormat.
We have a bit of gym mat about 6ft square; it's nice for the whole family to be able to come in out of the rain instead of one at a time. It's the end of the L of an L-shaped hall.
Andy
I'm not sure it would be worth buying a prefabricated one given how much work you have to do to the floor. Assuming a suspended wood one.
I'd also get enough mats of the same size to last for as long as you'll live there - given standard sizes have a habit of changing down the line.
In message , NoSpam writes
When I did mine I had to put down about 6" of concrete so I made a wooden former to create the recess when the concrete was set just removed the former and then tiled the floor and recess. No metal edging, just tiled, it was quite easy and still fine now, 10 years later.
Ditto - 20 years later. Rob
This will be on an existing concrete floor, so no scope to create a recess of more than 10mm unless I break-out some of the screed - having thought of it that may not be a bad idea! I would have expected the edges of the tiles to chip without edging of some form so it's interesting that it's not the case.
Dave
It's a concrete floor, but I may dig-out some of the screed to increase the depth beyond the 10mm tile thickness. A good point about buying spare mats.
In message , NoSpam writes
Please may I be the first to suggest an angle grinder? Lots of dust though.
When I did mine I used red terracotta floor tiles and just made sure that all the exposed edges were the finished edges of the tiles and that the floor tiles sat on top of the "wall" of the recess. No sharp edges and no chipping, (so far).
A decent, water cooled, tile cutter was of great benefit.
Mine is into a wood floor, and I used a hardwood edging neatly mitred. Best to have the mat flush with the floor to prevent a trip hazard.
In message , NoSpam writes
I was struggling to create a well in our screed when the builder said
*you can buy doormat by the metre to fit the tile recess*. Sure enough, he was right. Homebase, maybe? 15 years on they are still there. These are 300 x 300mm tiles so perhaps a bit more depth than you have.Yes. The dent I made in the screed is still there as well.
regards
A fair no of years ago I put doormat recesses into new (replacement) concrete floors at the front & kitchen doors.
The frames were made by welding from galvanized steel strips c. 45m x
3mm - standard stuff sold by builders yards for bracing & weather strips - & set into the concrete by c. 10mm. The size was chosen to suit a commonly available door coir mat widely available at the time, but (& there has to be a BUT) when the mats needed replacing sizes had changed or weren't available. Even so, there seemed to be a vast no of different mat sizes. Just not ours.Would suggest looking in at Homebase which sells (or did sell) doormatting cut off continuous rolls. Relatively expensive IIRC but if I had to do the job again, I would make a recess right across the floor facing the door & look to using the roll stuff. Would mean you would step onto a large mat & has a large area to put down dirty boots.
Not sure I'd recommend Al. It is likely to be a damp area so there is possible Al corrosion possibly worsened by being adjacent to concrete (salts?) + scuffing by footwear suggest you need something stronger like heavy galv steel. YMMV, of course.
HTH
I put the doormatting across the whole width of my internal "porch" , but put an inset mat at the backdoor . With hindsight should have gone for full width "fitted" matting in both locations. Bought the matting from a normal carpet retailer - plenty of choice of colour and pattern.
I just fixed some L section metal tile trim to the screed - it worked very well. Thanks for the earlier comments
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