ilverme
08-21-2005, 07:37 PM
Wow, mentioned awhile back about my friends tile that someone else did. I was a little more, even with the good friends discount. Two guys came in wiped out 800 sqf. in two days. Including: remove vinyl, appears to be some new plywood (can see under the house), backerboard, tile and grout. "Wow, fast and looks good " my friends said. I agreed, biting my tongue , thinking let's see a year from now. Two years have passed, recent phone call........."Hey, can you check out my grout, seems to be cracking"....... finally made it , results: Support beam under house hacked out by plumber to install downdraft vent, tile lippage, tiles starting to pop up, and on and on. Worked a day on joisting that had started to sag between beams due to missing section of beam, replaced beam, (oops, forgot my jacks under the house) then today started on the tile. Findings, the easiest time removing tiles ever. All the tiles with cracked grout took about 5 minutes per tile to remove, used a grout saw for a few minutes before discovering that I could easily remove the tiles by just chipping a little with my wood chisel. Tiles popped right up, no mortar stuck to them at all. Guys had used the largest gauge trowel I had ever seen for putting down 12x12 interior tile. Probably done a lot of Satillo buy the looks of it, and only owned one trowel. I can tell by the way the mortar has set up (besides being 1/4 inch thick) that it had probably set up beyond the "skimming over phase", more like the setting up phase. Or gooped on really dry. The backerboard was put down with no tape on the joints, not to many nails, and I am pretty sure cbu is not bonded. (I will dig up a little piece next weekend to make sure) What a mess, told my Friend if I find the backerboard has been set in thinset, I will add some screws and then re set tiles. Don't even need to clean them, no thinset is on them at all. Oh yeah, the mortar comes off of the backerboard (hardi) with little effort. All in all the whole job will have to be done over, trying to keep it looking okay until after football season. I did all this and still made it home for my game........ It just gets better everyday, I have only read about all the " don't do this " type of things I saw in this one job. (forgot to mention, the tile was set so high with blobs of thinset that the grout actually runs under the tile edes in big "grout footings" that go under the tile a good 1/4inch in some spots. )