Kitchen, laundry, foyer project

[LauraB]

I've been lurking here for a long time, bought TYW and I think DH and I are ready to tackle this project. It's an addition to a 200yo house with tile in the kitchen, foyer and laundry and hardwood in the family room. I've attached a picture of the floor plan but I don't know if it will actually show in the post.

Right now the floor joists are planned to be 9 1/2" TJI 230, 16" on center and the subfloor, 3/4" Advantech. We'd like the tile and the hardwood to be even at the transition between the foyer and the family room and between the kitchen and the existing dining room. The transition between the foyer and the den may have to be fudged a bit because there is a slight slope from the dining room to the den. Oh and there's a step in the foyer to accommodate grade limitations.

We're thinking Daltile Continental Slate in a Versailles pattern. Is that crazy with the step and all the doorways?

Ack, that picture is small. I'll try again.

[LauraB]

A little better -

[Tool Guy - Kg]

Welcome, Laura.

Sounds like you guys are going to be plenty busy. The only question I see in your post is about the Versailles pattern. I think it's neat, but it's hard to get a feel for what you're doing with the slightly fuzzy blueprint.

A quick clarifying question for you: that "Continental Slate" is actually porcealin, right?

[LauraB]

Yes, the tile is porcelain. I'm having trouble getting a decent looking image after resizing so I redrew the floor plan without out all the extra stuff on the architect's drawings. Maybe this will be clearer. The tiled area is in an L-shape and totals about 430 sqft.

Oh, and I added the spans for the TJIs I mentioned in my first post.

One question I have is about the transition from foyer to family room. 1/2" CBU plus the tile will actually come to more a little more than 3/4", won't it? The hardwood in the family room is 3/4" thick. We'd really like that transition to be absolutely flush. I don't think we can use less than 1/2" CBU over the 3/4" Advantech, can we?

[Brian in San Diego]

Laura,

You only need to use 1/4" CBU on the floors. CBU adds no structural intergrity to the floor, it's only purpose is to provide a substrate upon which to set tile. The 1/2" CBU is for walls to provide stiffness between studs. Remember to apply thinset under the CBU before fastening and tape and thinset the seams using an alkalai resistant mesh tape.

Brian

[LauraB]

Thanks, Brian. For some reason I thought the Advantech plus CBU must be at least 1 1/4".

Another thing we've been thinking about is the step in the foyer. I've searched the forum for old threads and looked at the Schluter nosings. Everything Schluter has is going to be way too industrial looking for our project. Daltile does have some bullnose tiles, but we were wondering if, especially with something like Versailles, the step wouldn't stand out enough to be safe. Could we use a hardwood stair nosing? All the rooms that will connect to the tiled area will have either oak or heartpine.

[Brian in San Diego]

Laura,

I see no reason why you couldn't incorporate a hardwood stair nosing into your tile project. I would treat the joint between the tile and wood as an expansion joint and caulk it rather than grout it.

Brian