I've got a small bathroom in my basement with some very crappy sheet vinyl in it. I was thinking about putting tile down (bathroom is torn up)
Any tricks to going right over concrete?

 

No trick to it Jake, just put down your thinset and put down the tile. I've put down over a thousand sf of tile over concrete with no problems whatsoever. Tile can be put down on concrete on interior and exterior applications. Just make sure you get all of the vinyl and it's adhesive up first, do a dry run layout of your tile, mark your starting point with chalk lines and you're good to go.

 

When we tiled the kitchen and bathroom with a slate tile, about 12" x 12" squares, the folks that put the tile down recommended leaving the vinyl down. In new houses they said they installed cheap vinyl first and then the tile, something to do with expansion and contraction. They just spread the thinset and layed the tile as usualThe tile has been down for over five years and we have had no problems at all.

Guess you've got to conflicting answers, both could be right.

 

When I read Jake's post I was thinking about expansion and contraction, especially in a basement. I've never layed down flooring before so I'm no expert but I do not for see a problem with going right over the concrete. I could see if each tile was butted up against the other but that's why you space them out accordingly.

- Chris

 

I see a lot more in the trades magazines about using a "crack-isolation" membrane. My latest issue of The Journal of Light Construction mentions the use of one and points to www.tileusa.com as a place to find a list of them. If the concrete underneath moves in any way, and the tile is directly bonded to it, the tile will crack. With a membrane, it may not. Large areas of tile should also get some expansion joints.

Jason

 

Yep - and the floor will be cold.

Three options:

a) Cheap and quick - tile directly over the concrete. Might have cracking problems if the floor ever shifts. Modern thin-set is a polymer mix with some small amount of give to it, but not much. Easy, quick, cheap solution, but floor will be cold and hard.

b) Better, pretty quick, and not too much more: Lay down a layer of tile underlayment first. That plastic orange egg-grate stuff. It gets mortared down to the concrete, then tile mortared to it. Provides a more giving barrier that will prevent cracking, as wall as a little of insulation.

c) Best, expensive, lots of work: First buid a sub-floor. Classic plywood on sleeper floor (byt keep sleepers off concrete with sill plate). But since you're putting tile on top, it has to be built well - narrow spaces between sleeper and extra thick (3/4" mini) plywood. Then tile on top. Nicely insulated floor will be warmer, ever so slight give will fell more natural, shouldn't crack. Bot lots of work and expense.

 

On small bathrooms on slabs I have just used thinset and small tiles because big ones will crack if the floor is not exactly level. I do clean and prep the surface well, right down to the bare slightly scarred concrete.

 

We used a self leveling concrete mixture to level the uneven floor whenever we enclosed our screen room ... worked great.

 

the house is 50 years old and the bathroom is very small. I dont really think I'll have concrete shifting problems, if I do, I'm sure i'll have larger issues

 

Yes, small bathrooms are different then larger rooms, as are older houses since they tend to have at least a 4-6 inch concrete floor, higher psi concrete, and tend to be well drained. If you have a floor shift after 50 years, I agree you have more serious problems :-)

You probably have a 3x6 bathroom floor, at the most.

A small 2-3" tile works well, especially in a small bathroom because you do not have to do as much tile cutting work to make it fit around the toilet. In a small basement toilet I might be tempted not to even bother cutting tile to fit around it, if I did not own a tile saw. I would get it as close to it as I could in a square shape. Then put tile in a bag, smash it, and then fit broken pieces together as close as possible in a moziac type pattern. Or just buy a bag of small 1x1 squares of any color.

It is a small basement bathroom, I would not spend a lot of money on it. It should cost about $12 in small tiles from Home Depot and about 1/4-1/2 a gallon of quickset depending on bathroom size.

If this bathroom is not seen or used much, I would go beg free or left over tiles off Craigslist.

For bathrooms and pretty much everything else I like white tiles with black grout because it is easy to clean and with black grout you do not have to clean it

 

never thought about smashing the tiles... good idea

 

The best advise I can offer is to buy pre mixed thin set and grout. It will cost a few extra bucks but I find it worth the money to save the hassel of finding the right mix on my own.