Tiling advice required please.

[newtoitall]

Great forum with lots of good advice, I've had a good look through but couldn't find an answer to my problem......

Doing a bit of a diy spruce up and decided to replace the worn carpet in the porch (93 by 126cm) with ceramic floor tiles...

Pulled up the carpet and underlay and discovered that there were old vinyl/lino tiles underneath. No problems so far as they scraped up ok, however underneath they had been glued to the screed floor by a bitumus/tar type adhesive.

Adding to my woes the floor itself isn't level either so I'll need to level it up as well.

So firstly is there a chemical I can use to soften the adhesive (I've tried scraping but there isn't much room to maneuver so any assistance would be beneficial).

Secondly whats best to use as a leveling compound (or could I solve my first problem by pouring this over the bitumus adhesive?).

Thanks in advance.

 

[gcol]

How uneven are we talking about here? I'm guessing that if it's had vinyl tiles stuck down then it should be flat enough to lay tiles. Unless it's way out you should be ok to just go straight onto what you've got with a powdered adhesive. We're only talking about just over a square metre so it's not worth worrying about self levelling unless it's literally miles out.

 

[newtoitall]

Wow thanks for the quick response!

The floor has a sort of shallow valley (its high at either side) with the lowest point about 5mm below the bottom of the spirit level.

I've already bought some pre-mixed multi-purpose floor tile adhesive (thinking this would be an easy job) from wickes, do you recommend I use something else to go over the bitumus adhesive and if so what?

Don't know if it'd make any difference but the tiles I want to lay are 330x330x7.8mm

Thanks again

 

[gcol]

5mm isn't much to worry about.
First thing to do is to take that pre-mixed tub adhesive back and get yourself a bag of powdered adhesive - a 10kg bag will be fine for such a small area. If your tiles are porcelain, make sure that the adhesive is suitable for use with porcelain tiles (porcelain is less porous than regular ceramic so needs different adhesive).
If you're bothered about the floor being uneven you can mix up some adhesive and drop it where the floor dips. Then take a length of timber that will reach from each end of the floor and drag it over the adhesive. This should give you a flat surface to tile to (though it should be easy enough to get the tiles level as you tile it anyway). When the adhesive is dry, you can tile over the top. You should have enough in a 10kg bag to level the floor and tile such a small area.
Just ensure that before you apply any adhesive that the floor is cleaned properly. Have a look at the tiling sticky for further info.

 

[cmdceramics]

You can use a heat gun on any old glue. just warm it up gently and scrape it away. easy.

 

[kevin75]

hello everyone. need advice. new to the site. i'm a nearly kitchen,bathroom fitter. want to focus on certain areas. tiling is definitely one trade i wanna get good at. any courses you can recommend so i can become better at it?sick of being jack of all trades master of none!

 

[lancenotalot]

hello everyone. need advice. new to the site. i'm a nearly kitchen,bathroom fitter. want to focus on certain areas. tiling is definitely one trade i wanna get good at. any courses you can recommend so i can become better at it?sick of being jack of all trades master of none!

Kevin post this as a new topic and also search tiling courses in the forum search facility

 

[kevin75]

hello everyone. need advice. new to the site. i'm a nearly kitchen,bathroom fitter. want to focus on certain areas. tiling is definitely one trade i wanna get good at. any courses you can recommend so i can become better at it?sick of being jack of all trades master of none!

Kevin post this as a new topic and also search tiling courses in the forum search facility

cheers will do