Fixing a 300 year old floor.
How to solve the problem of a floor that’s 300 hundred years
old and had substantially moved over that time?
This floor, due to the age and nature of the building, was
flat across half of its area (where another room had been) and exhibited large
20mm heigh waves across the second half of its area (the original floor), the floor is
wooden and upstairs and is punctuated by ancient plumbing and electrics that
still needed to be accessed. This kitchen floor had previously been tiled
incorrectly, the tiler had used the wrong floor covering over the original
floor (he used a 3mm marine ply which simply rippled and made the flatness
problem worse especially as it wasn’t screwed down properly) and he used the
wrong adhesives (he used rigid cements and grouts which simply delaminated over
a thermally moving floor and the tiles popped – every week!).
The solution was to remove the top layers of the floor (we
had to use SDS tile lifters working 2 man days just to get to the sound surface
below) the base wooden floor was thoroughly primed then using a flexible
adhesive we over boarded using 1.25m x 0.6m waterproof and soundproof cement
boards. These were set-out in a brickbond pattern, screwed at the recommended
intervals.
We now have a much flatter and rigid floor suitable to take
tiles. The undulations are still there but unlike previous attempts not so much
as to transfer noticeable lippage to the tile surface. The tiles (330mm x 330mm
ceramics) were now fixed to the cement board floor using a rapid setting
flexible adhesive in a thick bed solid bed to get 100% coverage under the tiles
to give them maximum support. The 4mm grout gaps were filled with flexible
grout. Finally the doors and kickboards were trimmed to suit the new floor
level and refitted.
This floor represented many challenges but they were
overcome using the correct methods and high quality materials. The previous
tiled floor was totally bent (old tiles and up to 25mm thickness of cement and
old tiles had been used as filler), the grout lines didn’t align and there was lippage all over, but most
importantly the tiles were popping off the floor on a weekly basis. The
customer was very pleased to see it gone, not only was it an eyesore, it was
dangerous!
The new floor is solid yet flexible (to move with this old
building) and laid as flat as can be achieved (no real noticeable change in
heights) on this very long and narrow room which had sunk and twisted over its
very long life.
Quite a challenge; we hated moving out tons of rubble just
to get started, but the end result was very satisfying.
