Remedy for Kerdi disaster...advice needed

10 years ago

I am doing a shower using Kerdi and mortar bed method. The tile guy has never done Kerdi and I read too much but has no real experience. You put these two together...

Long story short, on my insist we decided to kerdi and tile the shower wall first and do the mortar bed later to avoid damaging the floor Kerdi piece.

Yesterday he put up Kerdi on the shower wall and it's all nice and looking good. This morning he started to tile the shower wall, left two inches un-tiled to the floor for room for the floor mortar bed. Half way I realized I am screwed - the bottom Kerdi band hadn't been put on yet! Now there is no way to overlap the wall Kerdi and the future floor Kerdi!

He said what we can do is wait til 7 PM this evening so the top wall tiles are secured enough they don't weigh down the bottom low of wall tile. That time we can take out the last bottom row of 12x12 tile and apply the Kerdi band throughoput, then put the 12x12 tile back and leave the half Kerdi band freestanding not thinset to anything. Tomorrow when they are done with the mortar bed we thinset that portion of Kerdi band onto the mortar bed.

Advice needed: Is this doable? Any other option do I have now?

Thanks in advanced.

Dan

Comments (5)

carydan
Original Author
10 years ago
Here is another pic...
catbuilder
10 years ago
Remove the bottom row of tile. Proceed with the shower pan and waterproof it and up the wall. Tile the floor. Then put the last row of wall tiles back up.
carydan
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks catbuilder. This is exactly what we decided to do.

Little concern after removing the last row if all the top tiles will slowysink down but I tried to put some wood support underneath.

Another issue is he left 2" below but didn't count the thinkness of floor tile that we will put in.

So I am thinking either 1) put the last row of vertical wall tiles back and have 4"x4" floor tile butt against, or 2) lower the height of mortar bed by 7/16" (floor tile thinkness).

If I do 2) the highest point of mortar bed will be 1 9/16", short of 2" that people normally do. The shower is 5x3.5' so pitch wise it seems okay to lower the mortar bed thinkness, but will that weaken the mortar bed structure?

If it were you, which option is better.

Thanks,
MongoCT
10 years ago
Remove the bottom row of wall tiles. The upper tiles aren't going to go anywhere.

Then place the sloped deck mud and the Kerdi Drain.

Then Kerdi the sloped floor and let the floor Kerdi run up the walls to get the minimum 2" overlap of Kerdi. It's okay that the floor Kerdi is on top of the wall Kerdi.

As an alternative, you can Kerdi the floor but not run the floor membrane up the walls. Then use a strip of Kerdi like Kerdi band to overlap the floor-wall intersection.

Then tile the Kerdied floor.

After the floor is tiled, then you can reset the bottom row of wall tile, cutting them to fit if needed.

If you want to read even more, scroll through this thread, there are some photos that may help clarify.
carydan
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks Mango!

This is exactly what we plan to do. I got the idea of tiling wall all the way leaving the last row at the bottom to do Mortar bed and kerdi from your original thread. I drew a horizontal line on the 2" mark from the subfloor. The tile guy who has never done Kerdi and isn't really showing big interests to learn and he misunderstood and started to tile up from that mark up.

I wanted to share your original thread to him and he basically said "got no time to read or watch video".

In my area this time, all the good tile setters all booked up for weeks and I really need to get this done fast and chose him o it goes around the territery. Had been without master bathroom since Christmas...

Thanks again.