Tile Geek In Seattle

Shaughnn

Hello Folks,
My name is Shaughnn and I'm a tile contractor here in Seattle, Washington. I started cleaning up after tile mechanics shortly after high school in 1986 and here I am today. Union trained in the San Francisco Bay Area and I LOVE mudwork. I work alone for now which cuts down on the number of folks I can piss off in any given day and I like that just fine but I see an apprentice and helper in my near future. I like my trade. I like it a lot. And consequently, I like turning people on to tile and stone.
I usually hang out at the John Bridge tile forum but I like to expose myself to as many sources as possible to keep my knowledge current and complete so here I am and I hope I can offer as much in return for what I take away from these forums.
Thanks again for keeping this space going and I'll see you "on the wall",
Shaughnn Lee-Capua
Owner / Operator
Capua Custom Tile & Stone
Renton, Washington

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Shaughnn
Capua Custom Tile & Stone
Card-carrying Schluter Systems installer
Certified Wedi Corp. installer

reveivl

Good to see you here, Shaughnn. Recognise you from somewhere...

Watch out for the p&r forum.

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From where does knowledge come? If you need to know what is in a box, you could ask someone (not reliable), you could pray, (not useful), you can consult with the scripture (not helpful) or you could open the box (science)

Cole

Welcome to the forum!

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YourWayPainting

Welcome to the forum Shaughnn.

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Rich Turley

Hey Shaughnn, good to see you over here. Great to see someone with your tile & stone experience here.

Rich

TileTim

Welcome to the forum Shaughnn, I am new to this site also. I just started a small tile business after being away from this industry for about 15 years. I do mainly small jobs, kitchen, bath residential stuff. I was looking from some suggestions on a job I recently finished in an older (1960's) bathroom. Tub/ shower tile surround went up very good, the problem I may have in the future is the floor, I set 16x16's on the floor. I checked the deflection of the subfloor before I started and it was terrible. There is an exposed laundry room below the bathroom, so I determined what was needed from below. The 1960's construction consist of 2x8 solid oak floor beams (never had seen that before) and the flooring is 1x4 tounge and groove red oak. I believe this house started as a hand built northern cabin. Anyway I screwed the original floor the beams every 6 inches (there was alot of sqweeks) Then I put down the floor: mortar/ half inch durock/ screws every 4 inches - overkill I know / mortar/tile.
Let set for 24 hours came back and grouted the next day and found that I had a couple of sqweeks after I let the grout set up for 24 hours. I checked the deflection again and could not detect any deflection but I still hear what sounds like a nail sqweek. Is it possible that the tounge and groove is what I am hearing and will this pose a problem in the future? Obviuosly something is moving or binding I would guess, any suggetions???

jvcstone

Hi Shaughnn Good to see the old pirate here

JVC

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John VanCamp
www.jvcstoneworks.com

Shaughnn

Hi all, and thanks for the warm welcome.
Tim, the short answer is "You're screwed". You should have slipped a layer of plywood or OSB between the "garage planking" and the Durock to isolate the backerboard and tile from the dimensional lumber. Dimensional lumber swells, warps, twists, contracts and, in general, behaves very badly. The engineered plywood or OSB isn't going to suffer such contortion because the strands are much much shorter and thinner.
The better alternative would have been to remove the "garage planking" entirely and redo the entire subfloor with plywood or OSB. In either case, you should have determined that your squeaks were all buttoned up before proceeding to the next level. Noise = Movement and movement means inevitable tile failure.
As you've said that the underside is expose, you MAY be able to cinch down the squeaks from the underside but I doubt it highly.
Sorry to be a pisser,
Shaughnn

__________________
Shaughnn
Capua Custom Tile & Stone
Card-carrying Schluter Systems installer
Certified Wedi Corp. installer

TileTim

Schaugnn, I thought that is what you might have said. I did determine that all the squeaks I thought were taken care of prior to putting the floor down. I walked the floor for 10 minutes trying to make it squeak and found nothing. Bottom line is I should have put some OSB down. I may have a plan for working from the underside. No reason to be sorry about being a "pisser", I would much rather hear it straight up from a seasoned pro & correct my mistakes then continue to do it the wrong way. I really hate learning from my mistakes but if it makes me better than all is well. I did offer in the bid to replace the sub floor entirely and do it the "right way", the HO declined because of his budget which intern made me put a clause in the bid that I could not warranty the floor against defects to which he agreed.
I really don't want to do business that way, in the back of my mind I know it is not the proper way to do it. Would much rather do it right the first time. So I covered my a$$ anyway.
Thanks for the info