differnt levels of floor require ceramic tiling?

[anto]

Hi all
I want to lay ceramic tiles in my kitchen before the new kitchen arrives. It is a kitchen house (that's what we call them in Belfast).There are 2 problems.
I have knocked down a wall between the old 3ft x 8 ft kitchen and the next room to give me an overall size of 13 ft x 8 ft.
The first problem is that the kitchen part has a concrete floor and the other room has floorboards on joists with a 24inch drop to ground level (soil)
The second dilema ia that the concrete floor is about 7mm lower than the wooden floor but if I ply and tile the wooden floor this will raise the wooden floor by another 19mm approx.
It is not possible to raise the concrete floor around the back door entrance more than a few mm or it wont open. The door is a double glazed unit with a very low threshold.
Could somone suggest a cost effective (ie very cheap) way to remedy this.
Is the best way 1/ a ramp of sorts around the door
2/ move the door unit completely
3/ tile directly onto floorboards
4/ replace floorboards with minimum thickness flooring and tile dirctly onto this (what would that thickness be ??)
5/ remove flooboards and joists and fit a concrete floor on the other room up to the height of the existing concrete floor

My head is really pickled on this one - all suggestions greatly appreciated.
anto

 

[JIM456]

Hi ant,
You must line the timber floor before laying the ceramic tiles. Cheapest, simplest, option is:
1. Shutter off a neat square in front of your door, taking in the area that the door sweeps over.
2. Latex screed the concrete subfloor with a 7mm wash screed to bring level with your timber floor (you could carry on and apply a scrape on 2mm coat over the floor-boards if they need it).
3. Lay 4mm construction/exterior grade plywood over the timber subfloor, nailing with 1" annular/serrated ringnails (you don't need to use a thicker plywood).
4. Make sure you extend the plywood to bridge over the timber/concrete junction of the subfloor. Take the ply a couple of inches over onto the concrete and fix it with filler adhesive (Gripfill/Liquid Nails), weigh the edge of the plywood down and leave for a minimum 24 hours to allow the adhesive to set.
5. Apply a ramp of latex screed running from the edge of the plywood to finish with a feather edge. The plywood is 4mm thick so if you run the ramp 2-3 feet out onto the concrete then it will be gentle enough for the ceramic tiles to run over it without problems (though if its a highly polished tile the ramp may be visible and you might want to extend it even more).
6. Remove your shuttering at the back door and you'll be left with a neat, 7mm deep mat recess, just cut your ceramic tiles to it and fit a carpet/rubber entrance mat into the recess, your door should clear this easily.
Good Luck.
Jim

 

[anto]

Jim thank you for that.

You obviously spent a lot of time on that problem and it is well apreciated my friend.
It seems like a very sound plan.
thank you