En-suite floor covering

[tvmo]

Hello,

I'm looking for some guidance on floor covering for my en-suite. The en-suite is upstairs so the base of the floor is waterproof plywood over joists. The floor is fairly level but does slope away on one end from about 50cm to the wall. As far as I can tell I have 3 options: tile, vinyl or laminate.

My shower tray is embedded in about 30cm of cement as it is cast stone, which means I'll either have to cover this somehow (any suggestions would be welcome) or bring the level of the floor up to meet it.

My preference would be tile as I like the finish however I've heard various pros and cons on tiling on a wooden floating floor. What's your advice?

Thanks very much

[Tim Watts]

Tile - good, but ensure the subfloor isn't detectably bouncy and use a class II flexible tile adhesive and flexible grout (BAL and Mapei both do these and you can get ready mixed flexible in Tile Giant).

Laminate - noooooo! Too slippery IMO. Water ingress won't do it any good

- not sure I'd trust the so called kitchen grade stuff.

Vinyl - the ultimate good choice. Wears out, but inexpensive and waterproof. Can look like tiles from a distance.

[tvmo]

Thanks Tim.

Good advice. Where the floor slopes, can I bring the level up with tile adhesive?

With regards to the vinyl, I've thought about this as the easiest option, however how can I stop the gaps between the plywood showing through the vinyl? In addition vinyl will still leave the cement that supports my shower tray exposed. Is there anything that I can use to cover the cement that doesn't stick out too much?

Thanks

[Tim Watts]

I've seen a pro tiler do this for an extra 1/2". For that, he trowelled some adhesive down in the low bit the day before and let it harden (in your case to the level of the rest of the wood), then applied adhesive normally when he tiled. There's probably no real limit to this, but applying to much thickness in one go will probably lead to disaster if it shrinks, not to mention trying to bed a tile in 3/4" of gunge and keeping it where you want it.

[Malcolm]

Use self levelling compound (latex) to skim the floor. I have seen this done in the school where I work (thin ply over rough floorboards and then the compound) Years of heavy traffic later and no joins show.

This self levelling latex only copes with one or two mm difference but there are variations which will fill deeper 'holes'. These are then covered with a final latex layer .

Malcolm

[Tim Watts]

Good idea - but I would, just to be safe, fine a product that is rated for that. eg

700 Flex. I'd also make sure the ply edges are well screwed down.

Regarding the vinyl and join marks, the classic ways is to overcover with hardboard, staggering the joins between it and the ply - normally this is the method for dealing with floorboards. Do you really have that many bad joins ion the ply?

But, as hardboard has no water resilience at all, I might overcover the lot with the thinnest WBP ply available.

Photos might be handy at this point...

[tvmo]

Thanks guys.

I've decided to go for a tiled floor covering.

The floor is more uneven than I thought, probably up to 5mm in some areas. I'm going to level the floor using this:

I've levelled with the compound in the link, what type of tile adhesive should I use as I'll no longer be tiling directly on to plywood?

BTW, how can I post a photo?

Thanks.

[Tim Watts]

are screwed down in addition to any nails just to be sure.

You should still use flexible adhesive *and* grout. 5mm of levelling compound will take out any slight flexing that may occur with ply.

Pop it in flickr or one of the many other free photo sites and post a link here. Love to see them :)

[Tim Watts]

^^^ not