"junior"

[Ron]

John,
What's a guy like me gotta do to get a title around here?I've been a "junior"member here whilst everyone else has been promoted,I've even seen a mudslinger here.
O.K. so I'm a young(er) feller(30)but I've got the callouses(from tiling and mudding I'll have you know)to deserve a bit of a mightier title than junior.Should I send a case of Molson Export(recommend no more than 2 bottles for the American beer drinker upon first trial)?
A two-four we call 'em in Canada.Or do I send a sample of a reinforced mud bed to your house.Or should I just wallow in self pity as a humble junior member(this will involve cheap scotch)

[Sponsored Links]

[John Bridge]

Ron, Just send the beer. I'll set my own quota, if you don't mind. And forget all those "American" jokes. I heard about that TV show you have up there. [Or wait, maybe that was Canadian jokes. . . oh whatever. . .]

Now what in the world should we call a 30-year-old Canadian tile setter? I'll take suggestions.

[Ron]

I don't watch that extremely funny Canadian show.I do watch the Tonight show with Leno.The Jaywalking bits give us Canadians some insight into the American educational system though.
Hey,we're the ones who should be on the defensive here.I had a Austin cabdriver convinced that I worked in a tuna cannery and that my wife was tending to the sled dogs while I was away.The guy says to me "I thought y'all had those snow mobiles up there"
Seriously,I like travelling to the states.Favourite cities are Austin,TX and Charleston,S.C.
My favourite restaurant is the Waffle House.Man,if we had one of these in Toronto it would do so well.Two 24 hr diners here just went bankrupt(Fran's,been here since the 50's)because the service and the food sucked.
My brother used to drive transport trucks through the states and still does in his spare time for some extra income.With him I've been to almost every state.Went to a place once called Nogales,border town,AZ. didn't like that place though,rough.
O.K. I'm rambling here oh,and take it easy on me when it comes to renaming me

[Rob Z]

Ron

Send some of that so-called high strength Canadian beer to me. I am up to the challenge.

Your American friend,

Rob

[chip]

Ron,

I think you just named yourself. After all, anyone who has a brother, who has enough "spare time" to drive transport trucks, across the U.S. And tells a forum such as this. I think he should be stuck with it!

By the way, Molson Export is good, although I prefer the Brador.

Why don't you send a sample of the reinforced mud bed to each and every one of us and we will no doubt come up another name or 2 for you.

Art

[tileprof]

ex is good ron but i prefer canadian.
as far as a name ??????flatsomething?no... too many flats already. art's good at this!
if your traveling so much when do you get time to work on the tools?

[Bud Cline]

No more "flats" please. I get confused with the two here now.

[flatfloor]

Nanook of the North?

Psst! Ron send me a case of that stuff and I gaurantee I'll get you upgraded.

[John Bridge]

Hey Ron,

I sort of grazed over this earlier, but where in the hell DO you park your dog sled, while you wife is skinning tuna?

Oh, and it's not so much an issue of our "education system," it's more an issue of our lack of one.

My helper graduated from high school, but every day he whips a new one on me. Today, it was "acrost." (As in, he walked ACROST the floor.)

Of course, Kelly is about due. He'll argue for the vernacular. He's a native Texan! :)

[cx]

Geez, you musta "grazed" over that one too, John. Kelly's from Southern Pennsylvania actually. Even know how to say youse and youins, and all that. Yuck!

Anyway, what's wrong with acrost? How else you spect him to git from one side to the other, take the excess road?

Hey, we could have a Texas grammar forum here too! Ain't that a good ideal? We could axe Rob, he's a ex teacher and they all know real good grammar.

[flatfloor]

Youse guys aint gonna loin nuttin aboud speakin gud unles youse come to Nu Yawk an whats a gramer an fudder i don wanna hear nuttin aboud Lon Gisland!

[John Bridge]

Guess I did graze over that one, too. I'll have to pay more tension. Not!

But hey, Rob ain't the only teach. Wegotta actuel profeser on here. Name of Liz. Member?

Wegotta guy out West, too, who is a teach. Guy by name of Kirk D.

[John Bridge]

Okay, everybody in Texas agrees there's no helping New Yorkers speak better English. I mean, how the hell could someone who has no "l" concept say y'all?

But hey, what about Ron's title? Thirty-year-old Canadian tile setter (with some English skills) who does mud floors and rides around the south 48 in his spare time. Oh, and he likes the Waffle House. Too bad his wife has to work in a tuna factory, eh?

[Ron]

Been away from the computer a while.Been working crazy hours.No,I wasn't travelling through the states,haven't been there in years.
My brother took a load out to Lincoln this weekend though.But otherwise he's been a tile salesman for the last 10 years(No,not the type that blurts out poor advice.He's pretty knowledgeable about tiles but not installation methods,so he doesn't get into the technicalities of installing with his customers,as so many salesman do with dire consequences)

Hey,I hear these words all the time when I'm on a big job-site:joistses "Floor's pretty strong,it's got 12" joistses"
concreke,and my favourite:aluminumum.

I just finished a storefront in Toronto for a pastry-shop.1" glass mosaics on the walls and 3" Crossville cross-tread anti-slip mosaics on the floor with stainless Schluter stairtread profile on the riser.
Had difficulties with the walls,need some insights as to how you guys would have done it.

The opposing walls which were covered by the way,as was the stoop,were 5'x9' each.They were brick with paint and graffiti all over them and really wavy,unplumb and out of level.
I screwed a level piece of 3/4" plywood on the front 9' high to act as a guide for the mud.At the top it was set at a thickness of 3/8" and at the bottom it turned out that it was gonna be 1 3/4" thick,to be level.
So I knew this was going to be a big mud job.I applied Weld-bond to the brick,then I trowelled on modified thinset with 1/4" notch trowel to act as a scratch coat.I then screwed 2x2" stucco wire on top of that(overkill?)to reinforce the mud.
Bought 9 bags of fine concrete sand and some portland.Mixed it 5 to 1 and added a bit of air-floated clay to the mix for some added adhesion.Slowly packed the mud from the bottom up and ran the aluminumum screed straight-edges over it and steel trowelled it.Had a few voids in it still so then I bought 2 bags of parging mix,added some clay and Weld-bond and parged the walls to perfection with plastic parge trowel.
Solid as a rock and perfectly flat and level.Excellent base for glass paper-face mosaics.Even had the girl who owned the place mist it for few days until I came back to tile it.

The dilemma? It took me two 8 hour days and one 4 hour day(luckily I had priced the whole job at $2500 labour and mortars)
The job is finished and it turned out really nice though.

How would you guys have gotten the walls level?Should I have done consecutive coats of mud instead of trying to pack that kind of thickness in one shot?Or would backerboard and thin-set have worked?

How could I have done the prep work faster?I wanted a solid wall and flat for the mosaics.
John,you must have come acrost a wall like this that had to be mudded.Any faster way to do it?

[tileprof]

most walls we do in mud are wired and scatched-allowed to dry..scatch coat to take most of out of plumb.If i'm installing glass moaics they are backbuttered & set on plumb coat same day with pure cement(usally white).And yes it is labor intensive.Not to common anymore.last time i worked with glass mosaic was 86-7,did a jacuzzi and bathroom with shower...a lot of work!!

ron sounds like your wall could have been scatched twice--no need for plywood!!!

[Ron]

Tileprof,

The plywood was just there temporarily to act as a form board to pack the mud against otherwise it would just crumble at the front of the wall.I installed it to the brick at the front of the wall,level and then shimmed it with marble shims to get it plumb the other way.

Backbutter 1" mosaics?I used a 3/16" square notch trowel to get adequate coverage with modified white thin-set,but with almost no oozing through the joints(important with paperface mosaics).Some of those glass tile like Interstyle you have to skim mortar on the back because they are very transparent but I've never had to backbutter the small glass Asian mosaics.

Actually,installing the wall mosaics was a breeze.Spent maybe 12 hours installing the 90 s.f. with Schluter stainless 3/16" Schiene profiles on the front edge.It's the mud work that took too long.So you think I should have done the mud in consecutive layers,eh?That's what I think I'll do next time.

[JC]

I have thinseted cement board to walls like that before then tapconed them in place.

Another time I just framed it out with wood then CBU'ed it and drilled a couple holes and shot in minimal expanding foam to take out the bounce.

Of course mesh with a scratch coat works, done that a couple times.

But remember I am probably the most inexperianced one here so don't take my word for this.

"Canuckian mudman"

[chip]

I tried those marble spacers once, but they kept rolling away.

And whats with these Canadians any ways? Always scrathing their coats. Is it that cold up there, that they can't even take their coats off, to scratch an itch?

Ron,

I can't believe you let that "Tuna skinning" thingy, go by.

Art

[Edited by flatile on 08-29-2001 at 05:57 AM]

[JC]

Yea Jim look I can't even spell it right! Green I tell ya but i'm lernin.

[Ron]

"canuckian mudman"...hmmmmm
That's not a bad title,I can think of many worse but I'm not gonna encourage you guys.

[Ron]

Art!
Tuna skinning,I just got that!Man,am I slow or what?

[tileprof]

Ron..backbutering glass mosaic is a step in installing them!!!!!!!!the method of mudding you described tells all!!

[flatfloor]

Ron, As I told JC on a similar project, he could use a self leveling cement on the walls.

[John Bridge]

Don't you guys use fat mud in Toronto? As the prof says, scratch the first day, come back the second and brown it out. Hand packing that baby had to take some doing.

Last time I did glass mosaics, they had the brown paper on the face. Impossible to see what you're doing. Used white thin set and scratched it out of the joints the next day.

Canuckian?

[JC]

Paper on the face..never seen anything like that..ah unless I installed something upside down by accident. What is the reason for that(back buttering) so that the mortar lines don't show?

Am I saying that right John..Canuckian,canuckese,canuckoid???

[Ron]

Jim,
How do you use self levelling compounds on the walls?If you are serious,please inform me.

Well I'l tell you one thing,I know a thing or two about masonry and those walls are there forever.I believe in overkill especially on exterior projects.
I had never tackled a wall as bad as that one and that required that kind of flatness,so I approached it like a mud floor.I just didn't think that to apply the dry-pack mud all at once from the bottom up would take that long.

Tileprof,do you mean backbuttering each 1" mosaic?I've done tons of the glass mosaics and tile up to 6" but I never back-buttered small mosaics and you couldn't see any voids through them or shadows underneath.The larger glass tiles that are very transparent you definitely have to skim on the back or flat trowel the notches in the mortar to avoid getting the lines to show through.

The square-notch 3/16x3/16 trowel I used for these Chinese 1" mosaics provided excellent coverage and didn't come out through the joints too much.I know the adhesion was good because I had installed 4 sheets that were a different shade and had to chisel them out the next day,before the grout was in 'em.
When I install these I use a beating block,then a Gundlach 4" roller,then the block again and then some individually by hand.All to make sure they're properly seated.

[tileprof]

ron i'll email the info to you!

[Bud Cline]

......email to him?????


"Hey what about us"?

[John Bridge]

Yeah, what about the rest of us?

And what is Ron's title going to be? Canuckian? I don't think a lot of people will understand that.

How about "Toronto Tiler"?

Hey, speaking about Canucks, where's Harry?

[tileprof]

john.. dry pack on walls.....????????? how about junior
Jc all pools used to be paperface mounted!
the edges of glass mosaic are beveled(it may measure 1" on face but not on back!!)the buttering mix is the grouting!the pure coat is put on the fresh mud bed( bed-max 1/2" thick).if this canot be achieved then a plumb scatch is needed!!!!!

[Bud Cline]

What the hell language is that? Did you learn that from Sonnie?

[Sonnie Layne]

Torontiated... don't get me started, Bud :)

[John Bridge]

Muchos anos ago ALL mosaics were paper mounted on the face. When I was a little boy porcelain mosaics still came in wooden kegs. The boys would mount them at the shop and carry them out to the job site.

The reason glass mosaics are still done that way is so there will be nothing behind them to show through. Netting and perforated paper won't work.

I has occurred to me that net mounting on the face would be a good way to do glass mosaics, but last time I mentioned it somebody shot me down. Can't remember what their reasoning was, and it still seems a good idea to me. Nothing to show through the back, and you would be able to see what's going on in front.

[flatfloor]

No Ron, not really serious, it goes back aways to one of JC's posts on another board, anytime you see one of those smiley's with the big #!%@ eatin grins ignore me. In fact most people ignore me all the time. The smart ones anyhow.

However, and I am being serious now, in response to my facetious post on the other board one of the participants posted a picture of how he used slc on concrete stair risers to resurface them. If I can find the link I'll post it, or maybe JC remembers where it is.

[JC]

Yea I remember it(Ken posted it) it was a set of steps that were formed with 1/4 inch ply and poured like a set of steps.
Walls would be basically the same thing just form it up with wood and pour..right Jim

I don't know if that would be the easiest method in this case but something to add to the old arsenal anyways.Los of possibilties

[flatfloor]

Thanks JC, I knew it was Ken but you started the thread, I did a search but the search engine at FI wasn't working or else all your posts have dissappeared.

Like I said, that was in jest, in theory it would work and did on the stairs, but an entire wall? Nope. Unless we laid the wall down and........

Glad they let you out of the hole, how's John Gotti?

[Ron]

Tileprof,

I know the dust and dash method.To install these unsquare sheets with a pure coat of grout on a fresh mud bed would have been impossible(for me).Installing wall tiles on a wet mud wall using these old and time-tested techniques,beating,wetting,sponging,etc is difficult enough.

These mosaics being paper-faced and smooth,I would like to see how one could possibly install them that way with success,if that's the technique you're describing.

I have done masonry work(for jobs that involve tile) and tile installations both the old way and the modern way.Many times I conclude that the old-fashioned ways are still the best although I believe in certain innovative products and methods(such as Schluter).
This is why I'm so interested in what guys like John and Dave G. have to say.

Sensing that you may be slighting me somewhat in regards to packing the wall with mud and installing the glass mosaics,lemme just say that I could confidently hold my work next to yours,cosmetically and technically.
I'm not just a young novice who's experimenting with different methods till I find the fastest and easiest way.
In fact,I'm the one who always recommends products and methods to make the job better and my life harder.

A lot of guys can talk about how their work is proper but few can actually do it.There are some tilesetters who have been doing it for 30 years(and that's their claim to fame)and have been doing it wrong for 30 years.My work will get better and more efficient since I'm concerned about learning how to do the job better and stay on top of the industry's worthy innovations.Yet I will always believe in the importance of being a mud man in this trade.

The storefront I did is perfect.Period.

Be nice to your fellow Canadian.

[Bri]

Did somebody say "Beer"?

[John Bridge]

Couldn't resist, Ron. It's just got to be "Toronto Mud Packer."

Oh, you can work for me any day. Bring your raincoat. You can start Monday.

[John Bridge]

Bri, you must have posted while I was re-naming Ron.

Beer, where?

[Bri]

Just checking to see who was paying attention! I should have known you'd be the first, John.....Hey..when do I get a goofy name?...nice weather you're having down there John....no wonder you don't use mastic!

Bri

[JC]

I did'nt see any beer? That was mean.

Computer whiz?

[JC]

I did'nt see any beer? That was mean.

Computer whiz?


I guess that's better than Toronto Mud Packer sounds kinda like ahh....I better not say but not good.

[Ron]

Yeah,JC,my new handle has a bad ring to it,I know what you mean.

John,guess I should've been careful what I asked for.What are the chances of not being known as a mud packer?First the Tileprof was being tough on me,now my friend John has christened me with a name that has some real bad connotations.

Ronny likes women.(and beer which,of course,I'll be sending to John Bridge)

[Bud Cline]

Toronto Tileguy?

[cx]

Mud Wall?

[JC]

ROFLMAO

[Bri]

Hey Ron
Getting back to your original comments about the Toronto store front...you might want to try quick setting concrete sand mix for your first scratch coat..I get it at CBM..it's used for deck and Bridge repairs...drys is about 15 minutes.. rock hard..about $20 a bag...I use it when I'm in a hurry as a base for terrazzo....the stuff get really hot when it goes off..so work quickly. What store was it? I want to see it..if it's ok with you I mean.

Brian

[Sonnie Layne]

Torontonimo!!!! Gerinomimo's first cousin. (we called him Gerry)

[Ron]

Bri,

Thanks for the advice.If I ever have to do a wall that thick again,I'll definitely try that.I'll still use the 2x2 mesh though,love that stuff.
Whenever I'm doing a real big mud job,I get a contractor friend of mine to pick up fine concrete sand from CBM by the truckload with his heavy duty Ford.It's so cheap that way.Otherwise I buy this concrete sand in bags from Leona Stone in Oak Ridges.Theirs has just the perfect size aggregate in it.

I'll have to get the exact street address for that pastry shop,don't know the number.It's still boarded up so I'll give you the name and location this week when it's visible from the street.

(note to self: run over to pastry shop and replace the one cracked glass mosaic and fill the one pinhole in the grout before Bri sees it)

[Bri]

toRONto?...yeah..I like it!

[Sonnie Layne]

I missed that one, sorry.

Shoulda known it was there.

[Ron]

John,

Hey,thanks for the new,more appropriate name.I likes it.

I'm in the process of wrapping a "two-four" of Molson Export in 2x2 mesh and mud(so the goods won't get broken during shipping)Hmmmm...wonder what it'll cost to ship that heavy bastard to Katy,TX.Hafta get on the horn to my brother and his trucking connections.Instead of "express",I think I'll ship it "pregnant woman".Take nine months for the delivery.

[John Bridge]

Ron,

Just send me the price of the 2-4 (American). I'll go up to the corner and get it.

Bri,

Now that you're back in business, how about a little help at do-it-yourself.com? InfoTile, too.

Here are some specs tileprof sent over having to do with glass mosaics. I made a directory: http://www.johnbridge.com/tileprof

[Ron]

Tileprof,

Thanks for the info.Now I know what you mean by the buttering mix.I've done shower floors in a similar fashion with the pure coat of portland and a grout and portland and sand buttering mix.

I thought you meant back-buttering to assure there are no voids in the thin-set that may show through the glass.

The methods prescribed by the CTI make a lot of sense,sounds extremely difficult though.I thought such methods were old and forgotten since the popularity of strong thin-sets.Didn't realize that an organization like CTI absolutely insists on doing glass mosaics this way on exterior jobs.

O.K. you have humbled me and I actually appreciate it.That's 1 point for the prof.

I had no choice but to build out the wall from 3/8" at the top to 1 1/2" thick at the bottom.Had to get it level.Will still stand by the work with confidence.

As for using the modern method of applying thin-set and grouting the next day,I did make sure to get the best bond possible(this I tested when I had to remove the differently shaded sheets,most 1" pieces did not come off in one piece.)
I primed the parged wall with Supertek's Superweld,which is blue in colour,before I trowelled on the modified white thin-set(plain white thin-set modified with Supertek's Liquid Super-Lastic,no water)I'm sure it's not going to fail.

That article did scare me somewhat,however.And educated me too,thanks again,professor.

[John Bridge]

Everyone knows I'm a mud man, but those methods do seem a bit antiquated.