Tile and Backsplash Installation Services

Tile and Backsplash Installation

What Is Under the Tile Decides How It Ages

Tile fails from underneath. A floor that flexes, a wall that was never flat, or a shower pan that drains to the wrong place will crack grout and lift tile no matter how carefully the tile itself was set, so the substrate is where the work starts. Floor framing is checked for stiffness before anything is ordered - ceramic and porcelain want a floor that deflects no more than its span over 360, natural stone about twice that, and a bouncy joist bay is fixed with blocking or sistering rather than absorbed by the mortar. Flatness is measured with a straightedge, not judged by eye: a large-format tile with any edge over fifteen inches needs the surface flat to roughly an eighth of an inch over ten feet, because lippage that would disappear under a small mosaic stands up as a ridge under a two-foot plank. Low spots get self-levelling compound or patch and high spots get ground down, since mortar is an adhesive and not a levelling material - building thickness into it is what leaves hollow-sounding tiles a year later. Over plywood, an uncoupling membrane absorbs the seasonal movement of the subfloor so it does not travel up into the grout. In a shower, cement board is a backer and not a waterproofing layer: the walls, the curb, the pan and every inside corner and change of plane get a bonded membrane with the corners banded, and the pan is pre-sloped to the drain before tiling rather than shimmed flat and hoped over. Movement joints go where the standards put them - soft joints at the perimeter, at inside corners and through large fields - filled with silicone rather than grout, because grout has no give and the first thing it does under movement is crack.

• Bathroom and shower tiling over a bonded, banded waterproofing membrane
• Pre-sloped shower pans, linear and centre drains, curbs and curbless entries
• Large-format floor tile on a substrate levelled and checked for deflection first
• Kitchen backsplashes tiled after the counters are templated and set
• Mosaic, herringbone and stacked-bond layouts set out to land symmetrically
• Natural stone - marble, travertine, slate - set in white mortar and sealed
• Heated floor cable or mat under an uncoupling membrane, tested before and after
• Tiled niches with shelves, benches, metal edge profiles and mitred outside corners
• Regrouting, re-caulking and repair of cracked, hollow or failed tile