Tile Installation
Hiring a good tile installer is probably the most important thing you can do for your bathroom or kitchen remodel. Having improperly installed tile will ruin an entire renovation. Tile should NEVER be uneven, crack or detach from its surface (not even in the bathtub 20 years later). Unfortunately a bad tile installation may be hard to notice at first, but as the years go on tiles will start cracking and detaching from the surface. At RE Home Improvements we know and follow all the proper tile installation techniques, and you can be sure that the installation will last a lifetime.
Here are some of the steps we take to ensure a job that will last.
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Materials. A bag of thinset mortar can cost from $7 to $30+. The main difference is that the less expensive thinsets do not have the ability to bend over time. This is important because a house settles over time and expands and contracts with the seasons whereas the tile does not. Without a "flexible" thinset, the house's movements will translate to the tiled floor and crack it. For a material that is never seen, it's easy to use the cheaper materials. But we only use quality thinsets to ensure the floor will not crack.
Leveling. We never install tile over an uneven surface. Some installers may tile over an uneven floor and try to make up for it by putting more mortar in some places and less in others. The problem is that mortar isn't designed to be used this way and will ultimately fail. We level the floor in a separate step from the tile installation with proper leveling compound. This obviously costs more upfront but is a small price to pay when the alternative is replacing the floor.
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Backbuttering. Instead of just putting the thinset on the floor and laying the tiles on top, we also "backbutter" the tiles with thinset. This extra step promotes a better bond and will keep the tiles from popping loose over time.
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Anti-lippage clips. Lippage refers to differences in elevation between edges of adjacent tiles. Nowdays with tiles getting bigger and grout lines getting smaller this is more of an issue than ever. We use the RLS system to eliminate the possibility of lippage.
We also takea great deal of time to measure, calculate and lay out the tile before installation to make sure the installation will be balanced and aesthetically pleasing.
