All your Homebase are belong to... you! / The House 'n' Home Thread. - The Bear and Badger

hylian_elf

Quick noob questions if I may, please.

1) Tiling in bathrooms and kitchen. Do you that before or after installing applicants and materials and units etc? Seems a waste of tiles if you do it first? But looks nicer?

2) Skirting boards. You do those last? After installing furniture and appliances etc? Just thinking that doing them first means furniture won’t sit flush against the wall unless you cut the skirting board? But then there are the wall electric sockets to think of which will poke out anyway.

Hmmm. Builder wants to put all tiles down first. Then appliances and units etc.

Dinostar77

Tiles first always. Walls then floor if you have floor tiles. The builder only needs to tile areas that are visible. Skirting boards are normally towards the end as they need to be cut to size and are a finishing touch.

For bathroom technically its plasterboard first then tiles. If you have a cavity between outer wall and plasterboard then then you can fill the cavity with insulation material before plasterboard sheets go up.

Ceramic or porcelain tiles? The latter cost more per sq meter to tile up and if you need to drill into them it can be £10 per hole as you need a diamon tipped drill bit.

hylian_elf

Dinostar77 wrote:

Tiles first always. ... The builder only needs to tile areas that are visible. ...

That seems contradictory. If you tile first, don't you just tile the whole wall/floor? If you are tiling only visible areas, wouldn't you put all units/appliances first and tile around them?

Porcelain tiles, expensive (£144/m2), hence I need to be sure how much to get. Will ask builder later but thought I'd get thoughts from others first.

Funkstain

tile first bud

Dinostar77

If you tile everything it will cost you a fortune for no benefit. Example we had the bathroom done last month. Every wall and floor was tiled apart from under the bathtub and the side of the wall that the bathtub sits next to as neither are visible.

If your tiling a kitchen you wouldnt tile where cabinets, cupboards, fridge etc are going as those fixtures would obstruct the sight of the tiles and hence pointless in tiling. Hope that makes sense.

We used porcelain tiles for our bathroom and ensuite as there were no ceramic tiles we liked available. 60cm x 30cm at £25/m2 from Topps Tiles. Used my plumbers account to get further discount on the tiles. Ask you builder to work out how many tiles you need plus 15% extra tiles to cover any broken ones and spares for future use.

Make sure the builder has the BTU size worked out (you can do it yourself) to ensure that any rads going in provide the right amount of heat to the rooms.

n0face

Tiles are to water proof the space so you tile to best achieve that. Usually it would be to fit shower trays and baths, tile floor, tile walls, grout, for toilets and sinks and then seal.

Paul the sparky

I've got a sneaking suspicion that the builder knows how to do his job

Funkstain

n0face wrote:

Tiles are to water proof the space so you tile to best achieve that. Usually it would be to fit shower trays and baths, tile floor, tile walls, grout, for toilets and sinks and then seal.

yup

and usually true sparks but always...?

Dinostar77

Paul the sparky wrote:

I've got a sneaking suspicion that the builder knows how to do his job

Of course he does, but no harm in hylian increasing his knowledge about this stuff.

hylian_elf

n0face wrote:

Tiles are to water proof the space so you tile to best achieve that. Usually it would be to fit shower trays and baths, tile floor, tile walls, grout, for toilets and sinks and then seal.

Thanks, that order makes sense and is what I was thinking. Builder suggested tile everything first. Maybe again he didn't mean that and it's a language issue (his English isn't great). Also Dino confused me by saying tile first and also saying not behind/under items, which sounded like a difficult job.

g.man

TILE EVERYTHING

poprock

g.man wrote:

TILE EVERYTHING

If you’re fitting out a murder room.

Unlikely

MURDER EVERYTHING

Armitage_Shankburn

MURDER TILES

Wookienopants

I have done a manly thing and decorated our bedroom! Stripped the old manky wallpaper off, sanded down all the walls, painted 3 walls and wallpapered a feature wall. Also got rid of the old furniture and built a desk and chest of drawers.

All in a day.
I'm so fucking proud of myself right now (this is a big deal as I'm not very handy)

Unlikely

That's a heck of a lot to fit into a single day. I am impressed.

Now your wife will point out that you hung the wallpaper upside down.

g.man

hahaha

hylian_elf

Question: solid wood or engineered wood for living space flooring?

I like the feel of solid better, but it's thicker, and apparently not as easy to fit and can be prone to distortion and warping?

Wookienopants

Unlikely wrote:

That's a heck of a lot to fit into a single day. I am impressed.

Now your wife will point out that you hung the wallpaper upside down.

Oh I also put a coat of paint on the hallway wall after getting some marks on it from the pasting table

poprock

hylian_elf wrote:

Question: solid wood or engineered wood for living space flooring?

I like the feel of solid better, but it's thicker, and apparently not as easy to fit and can be prone to distortion and warping?

Solid wood if you can afford it. Yes, it will expand and contract with the seasons, but the real thing is always better than imitation. Get it done by a professional and you won’t need to worry about it being harder to fit. They’d lay it, sand it, stain to your chosen colour, then polish. All you’ll ever need to do is clean it and maybe repolish every few years.

Minnesänger

Don’t listen to pop. Ditch wood as an aesthetic entirely and get marble laminate everywhere. Even the ceilings. You can thank me later.

GooberTheHat

With chrome accents

Minnesänger

Goober knows.

Time_on_my_hands

We got solid wood flooring in the living room and dining room. It's lovely. The only issue is that the boards needed tacking down meaning another layer of hassle if you need to get to the floorboards. Also, the fitter accidentally punctured a waterpipe when fitting!)

Composite is a compromise that you might want to look at.

Before fitting, just make sure you get any pipework, etc sorted first (we got a radiator fitted).

If I'd known better I'd have arranged for some of the boards to be laid so they could be lifted independently of the rest re accessing the subfloor if needed. Not sure how something like this would affect the look, though.

Should add, we've had no warping, though you need to be more aware of scrapes from heavy furniture.

hylian_elf

poprock wrote:

hylian_elf wrote:

Question: solid wood or engineered wood for living space flooring? I like the feel of solid better, but it's thicker, and apparently not as easy to fit and can be prone to distortion and warping?

Solid wood if you can afford it. Yes, it will expand and contract with the seasons, but the real thing is always better than imitation. Get it done by a professional and you won’t need to worry about it being harder to fit. They’d lay it, sand it, stain to your chosen colour, then polish. All you’ll ever need to do is clean it and maybe repolish every few years.

Yeah I'm leaning towards solid wood! Got some samples in the post today and the solid oak feels and looks much better than the engineered stuff. Only thing is that it is thicker. Our bifold doors guy has already been and surveyed and measured based on a 'floor finish line' using 5mm fibrewood with 15mm (engineered) wood on top. The solid wood is 18mm. I have emailed them to ask if that will matter, but am hoping 3-4mm difference is negligible.

Armitage_Shankburn

Minnesänger wrote:

Goober knows.

An underrated pro is

Spoiler:

Armitage_Shankburn

What can I say, I'm a thruster.

Time_on_my_hands

hylian_elf wrote:

Yeah I'm leaning towards solid wood! Got some samples in the post today and the solid oak feels and looks much better than the engineered stuff. Only thing is that it is thicker. Our bifold doors guy has already been and surveyed and measured based on a 'floor finish line' using 5mm fibrewood with 15mm (engineered) wood on top. The solid wood is 18mm. I have emailed them to ask if that will matter, but am hoping 3-4mm difference is negligible.

Only thing we found was that the skirting boards went back on a little higher (we had carpet before) which interfered with a couple of low plug sockets.

Unlikely

Wookienopants wrote:

That's a heck of a lot to fit into a single day. I am impressed. Now your wife will point out that you hung the wallpaper upside down.

Oh I also put a coat of paint on the hallway wall after getting some marks on it from the pasting table

Now your wife will point out that you have put the paint on upside down.

g.man

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