Renovating Our Bathroom

[Metal Head]

Hi,

As some of you will know via a couple of threads in other forums on this site that I am in the process of doing up our bathroom. I started today removing the tiles from the walls. As a result I have a couple of questions to ask. As you will see from the images attached:-

Q1) After reading some DIY books & reading some threads here I was going to trowel on some compound and then lay the tiles on that. However, as you can see from the image attached, the previous tiler used a method of putting a compound on the tile (in the 4 corners and the centre of each tile). Is either way acceptable or better for wall tiling?. I would also appreciate some advice on whether the plasterboard requires sanding flat before tiling.

Q2) Looking at the other 2 images is this some form of old "plasterboard" with what seems to have some hemp like material in it?. what would you suggest I should do about the joint between the new & old plasterboards as shown?.

Thanking everyone in advance for their input.

Regards
David

[rod@plasterbrok]

Hmmm. That looks like face scrimming.

When joining fibrous plaster sheeting they opened the joins and used a scrim to re-enforce the join. It looks like you have pulled the sriim out of the join. If you are tiling over this area. The quality of the finish is not crucial, so I would fill the join again with cornice adhesive. It looks like there is enough there for it to grab onto. Either way you could fill it then scrape it back level with the surrounding are then tape over the join.

The tilers will have to help you on the preparation of the wall though.

Cheers
Rod Dyson

[Pulse]

Metalhead,

the 4-5 globs of adhesive was an old way of tiling, the current Australian Standards does not allow it. Use a notched trowel as you suggested.

Cheers
Pulse

[Metal Head]

Hmmm. That looks like face scrimming.

The tilers will have to help you on the preparation of the wall though.

Cheers
Rod Dyson

Firstly, thanks to Pulse and you Rod for answering my questions so soon;). Btw Rod I am going to attempt to do this myself - for the 1st time:eek: well better late than never I suppose. The worst case scenerio is if I don't have the skill to do it then at least I have saved some money by removing the old tiles:).

Pulse you said it is now illegal to tile with the "5 spot method", do you know why?.

Cheers
David (Who Has a Metal Head - with nothing in it:D)

[rod@plasterbrok]

Good for you to have a go.

One most important thing with plastering, Never wait for the coat to dry before scraping back between coats. That is when the plaster is at its hardest. If you let it set and once it has gone hard BUT STILL Damp, you will find you can scrape even the worst job back flat to the surrounding surface quite easy. Use a blade (joint knife) or the back of a trowell.

If you have some really bad bits using a smaller joint knife you can really get into the scaping back. It beats the hell out of sanding.

Not scraping back is the biggest mistake I see the diy guys make.

Just a tip for others. You can't sand back base coat successfully when it breaks through the top coat. The reason for this is the Top coat is softer and the more you sand the HARDER BASE COAT the more of the softer TOP COAT you sand from the surrounding area making the bump worse not better. If you get this scenario scrape back the offending base coat and top coat over the area again. Sand back and it will be flat.

Cheers

Rod Dyson