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weedyacres

Retiling our foyer: come watch....and help!

weedyacres
15 years ago

Our latest DIY remodeling project is to redo our tiled foyer with something more updated. We're starting with nondescript 12" gray tile laid on the diagonal in the 10'x14' space.


Last Saturday we rented an electric hammer and chipped out all the tile. It took about an hour with a sharp chisel head to pry out the tile (set without underlayment(!)), and nearly 3 more hours to knock down the residual thinset stuck to the OSB. To get at that, we used a rounded chisel head and hammered at it perpendicularly, to kind-of crush it with vibrations. Any lessons for next time on how to do this more easily?

After hammering and shop-vac'ing, it now looks like this:


Questions:

1. The OSB is a bit pockmarked, as a lot of slivers came up with the tile removal. Do we need to do anything more to prep it, or will it be okay to lay thinset/Ditra over?

2. We're using 4 different tiles in our pattern, and one is a mosaic that's a little thinner than the main tile. It's going to be a border. What do you recommend to build up underneath to make it level with the surrounding tile?

Comments (18)

  • sailor86
    15 years ago

    Darling, why are you changing your floor? It looked beautiful to me.

  • PRO
    Avanti Tile & Stone / Stonetech
    15 years ago

    Oh stop. It's a "done deal" now. I'd use an 18" Travertine on the floor in a staggered pattern with about a 1/8" joint.

  • PRO
    Avanti Tile & Stone / Stonetech
    15 years ago

    You didn't say what the total flooring thickness is. We need that. A natural stone requires a bit more support than the average tile.

  • jerry_t
    15 years ago

    I suggest you contact Schluter about using mosaic tiles over Ditra. Ditra has a minimum requirement for tile sizes.

  • clg7067
    15 years ago

    Was that tile layed right over the OSB, no backer board? I think 4 hours demo sounds pretty good to me right now. ;)

  • glennsfc
    15 years ago

    Amazing that the floor held up at all.

  • weedyacres
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    The old floor looks much better in that photo than it did up close. It had about 3/8" joints and even with that, they didn't line up real well (though they were at least level). Plus it's a cool gray, like the rest of the house with its gray berber downstairs and gray pile upstairs, and we're remodeling to warm earth tones. It's boring; we want pretty, even if it does take some elbow grease and dust up the house.

    Nope, no backer board under the original floor.

    The mosaics are 2x2, within Schluter's limits. The OSB is 3/4" t&g, and is well supported from the block in the crawl space below. Alas, no travertine; it'll be porcelain in a kind-of "rug" pattern: brown tile rectangle, surrounded by a mosaic border, surrounded by off-white tile.

  • brutuses
    15 years ago

    The new floor sounds like it's going to be gorgeous. I can't help, but I will be the first to compliment when it's done. LOL

  • weedyacres
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    Moving on....this morning I put down the Ditra with some modified Laticrete (my favorite brand) thinset. It took about 3 hours. My DH got home from chaperoning a Boy Scout campout right as I was cleaning up. Nice timing on his part. :-)

    We had some lunch and are headed off to the gym. I'd like to start laying the tile this afternoon, since otherwise it'll be next weekend. We'll see how I feel about walking on the Ditra when we get back.

  • buzzoo7
    15 years ago

    Just a reminder since I can't tell for sure from the pics- make sure to check and see (if you haven't already) that the casings don't need to be undercut a little higher before you start setting tile. You're a hard worker and it looks like you've done this before. As far as the thinner tiles being built up to match the height of the larger tiles, you can build it up by using pennies under the tiles. It's a little time consuming but it works and is cheap. Or you can leave out the feature area, set the large tiles on each side, tape off the set tile, and fill in the trough with floor patch or thinset and screed it to the height you need, let it dry, and set the mosaics.

  • weedyacres
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    buzzoo, you've got good eyes. :-) We're actually going to redo the trim around the door to dress it up a bit, so the casings are coming out. Just didn't manage to do that before the Ditra laying.

    I didn't see your note before we dove back into the tiling, so we took an alternate route (see below), but I'll keep in mind your two tricks if we do this next time. The pennies would probably be a bit pricey with the size of our mosaic border, but the screeding might work.

    Late afternoon we snapped some chalk lines did a couple dry layouts to determine the exact size of the inside portion, and started tiling. DH and I have a good system wherein he mixes thinset and cuts tiles, while I lay the tiles and mark them for cutting. Three hours later we had this:


    The inside is all done, and for the border we ended up laying a 4" second layer of Ditra under the mosaics. In laying the mosaics, the last tile ended up about 3/8" too long for the short edge, so we trimmed 3/16" from the tiles on either end and you can hardly tell.

    However, we did encounter another geometric difficulty I need some ideas on. The rest of the floor is going to be 16" tiles laid straight around the "rug" part. The problem is that the "rug" with border is 75" wide and 125.5" long. That's not a nice full-tile arrangement. Any rules or ideas to approach this? The outside area to fill is about 22" wide all around.

  • Shannon01
    15 years ago

    This is probably a stupid response but I will dare. What about using 12x12s instead of 16s? I am not sure how it will look using 16s with 6s. Might look like a rug around a rug. Even if you stagger them it might just be a pattern around a pattern.

    Another thought... what if you did the full 16s in a diamond pattern like in the rug. Do the solid 16s closest to the rug with the cut down ones to fill in. I think this would really work.

    By the way, you have totally inspired me. We are total, and I mean total, DIYers. I just did my hearth and surround with granite and it was frustrating due to the flatness of granite. The slate I am going to do will be easier due to it being slightly unlevel to begin with. You have me all psyched up to get this done. I too will post pics as we go along. I am guessing you are hung up on this final decision. I am excited to see your final result. I too am doing a rug. See my post about patterns matching in hall/foyer and give me some advice.

    Thanks and keep on tiling!

  • sweeby
    15 years ago

    Looks FABULOUS Weedy!

    You've probably already solved your oustide-the-rug dilemma, but I was going to ask how the outer dimensions of the rug lined up with your 16" tile dimension. In other words, if you did simply lay a 16" plus a 6" on the outside, would your 16's line up neatly with the long and short dimensions of the rug?

    We did a similar layout for our main downstairs area, with 20" straight-laid 'paths' and 20" diagonal islands. The most amazing thing was how perfectly straight our walls were and how perfectly the rooms' dimensions fit into this pattern. We never had to trim more than 2" off an outside tile.

    More pictures!

  • weedyacres
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    Thanks for your replies, shannon & sweeby. I didn't see any responses for a few days, so I headed over to the bathrooms forum where the tile gurus hang out, and Bill tipped me off to "dutchman" cuts. Here's how it turned out, after 4 hours of the two and us working on Saturday:

    Can you tell what we did? I wanted the larger tiles, not the 12 inchers for the outside, and they didn't line up right with whole tiles (3" too long on the short side, 5" too long on the long side), so it had to entail some creative cutting....

    I still need to grout (hopefully Wed or Thu, depending on whether I can get out of work at a decent hour).

    shannon, I'll go take a look at your other post. And I'll be looking for your photos!

    BTW, if you look closely in the upper RH corner, that's a sample of the dark walnut we're going to lay in our dining room. That's our next project.

  • weedyacres
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    Got the floor grouted last night in about 3 hours, including application and 3 washings. Here's the finished product after a 4th haze-removal wash this morning.

    sailor86, do you forgive me for changing it? :-)

    Now I've just got to paint the walls, add some trim around the neighboring doorways, and put the baseboards back in. This stuff never ends....

  • momfromthenorth
    15 years ago

    It looks gorgeous!!! I'm impressed at how fast you work too. The new colors are much "warmer" than old tile. Will be very pretty when you get the wood installed in the adjoining room/floor.

  • jerry_t
    15 years ago

    That looks real nice :)