Fix it: installing a tile floor

[DarkSkies]

Tile installs are expensive, because a good tile man is worth his weight in gold. There's a guy out there who is a master tile guy. He does the most amazing tile work, catches large, and never brags about it. He taught me a lot about fishin, but for some reason he don't wanna know me anymore. Hey, man if I did somethin to ya personally, I'm sorry, but I do appreciate all the times you took to teach me stuff. Tight lines.

Back to the tile talk, pics to follow.

1. Prepare your floor. No flex, no flex, no flex! Good prep work is the most important part of any job, don't skimp here. This job will assume you're laying over a plywood base. If there is substantial flex to that base, any old or rotted wood, you may need to replace or sister up/place some cripples underneath the floor, if you have access.

For the most part, this won't happen. You'll run into this mostly in bathrooms that have had water damage for a long time and may have soft areas. One bathroom I had to rip up half the floor by the tub area, sister some 2x6s to the joists because the whole corner of the room sunk a bit, lay new plywood, and then start with the cement board. But that was an extreme case.

If ye got squeaks, now's the time to fixem. Figure out where the joists are, and sink screws into them at varied spots until the squeaks are gone. Sometimes 10 well-placed screws will do the job, sometimes more.