Chiswick: Ground Floor Restoration

Tile in Progress had worked at this property the previous year, retiling the en-suite shower walls. During that visit we noticed the shower tray was moving underfoot and flagged it to the client. The budget was not there at the time for a full investigation, so it was left. Less than a year later the client called us back. When we lifted the floors across the en-suite, the adjacent WC and part of the entrance hall, we found a leak from the shower waste pipe that had been running silently through the subfloor for years.
The existing tiles had been laid directly onto plywood throughout, which is not a suitable substrate for tiling and compounds the problem significantly because plywood moves with changes in humidity and temperature, putting constant stress on any tile bed above it. The plywood came out entirely across all three rooms. In the en-suite and the WC the joists beneath were completely deteriorated by the sustained water damage and had to be replaced. The joists ran continuously from one room to the other without a break, which meant working carefully around the dividing wall to remove and replace them as full-length timbers without disturbing the structure above. In the entrance hall the joists were intact but flexing, so noggins were added throughout to stiffen them before any boarding could begin.

With the structure sorted, 22mm treated chipboard was glued and screwed to the joists across all three rooms to form the new base. In the entrance hall, 12mm cement fibre board went over the chipboard to provide a rigid, stable surface for the marble. In the en-suite and WC, insulation boards replaced the cement fibre board to allow electric underfloor heating to be installed in both rooms before the floor build-up was completed. Marble tiles are unforgiving. Carrara in particular is a relatively soft stone and will crack across the face if the substrate beneath it moves even slightly. The preparation work on this project existed entirely to prevent that from happening.
The entrance hall is tiled in Carrara marble at 150 x 400mm in a herringbone pattern, the WC in Carrara White Marble Polished Basket Weave Mosaic, and the en-suite shower in Hartley White porcelain. All surfaces were sealed on completion. The project took four weeks. Most of that time was spent on the work that does not show in the finished photographs.