Can you tile bathroom walls with 1/2" thick limestone tiles and would you have to mud set it?
Question:
Answers:
you can tile walls with thick tiles, but there are considerations. epoxy gives a strong bond, but is expensive and difficult to work with. you can use thin-set, they make different kinds for different stones. find one meant for a natural stone like slate for cultured marble. also, you will need to 'back butter' your tiles.
use a notched trowel(check your bag of mortar for the recomended size notch) to spread the thin-set on the wall, use the smooth side of the trowel to spread a thin layer on the back of the tile. cover the entire tile, as thin a possible. this will help the tile bond to the thin set on the wall.
it would help if you have the time to only place a few tiles high each day, so the weight of the upper tile wont press on the lower ones untill they set up.
good luck
Yes, you need an epoxy thin set mortar, you will need to work fast so be sure of your set up. Good luck
yes and yes . if you use mastic it could take up to three days for it to harden or more . if you lay them from the bottom up and use spacers it will be o.k. be prepared to use tape to hold them to the wall so they do not fall and yes you will have to let each row set up be for you can move on . on a good note there is a rapid setting thin set that will set in about 20 minutes ,but you will have to mix small batches as you go good luck ,if you were in st.Louis i could show you how it was done , i do this kind of work all the time
yes you can
but what is your substrate?
a CBU ( Cemenet Backer Unit like Hardibacker or Durarock ).
or drywall
if drywall i'ld suggest removing and replacing with a CBU
then thinsetting the stone to that
for showers what I usally do is to screw in a 1x4 pine bat board to allow for the 1st row to set on, this way all the weight is on the bat board and not on the CBU/ thinset as you stack the walls. With the proper stone shim/ wedges/ spacer you can easily stack 8 feet high in one day ( provided you use a thinset like marble thinset in a backbutter skim coat on the stone and a notched trowel on the CBU ). The neat thing about stone is you can use Bondo to temp set a stone in place ( as long as the CBU is Hadribacker, as this trick will not work with Durarock or other like wise CBUs ) by placing small "hot" batch mixed dot on the corners, this will have the stone locked into place in about 2 to 5 minutes. the beauty of this approach is excess bondo is razored off clean, and if the stone is off in setting in registration ( up , down, in / out side to side ) you can torch the stone hot and the bondo will soften up and you can peel up the stone, scraped off the bondo and start over.
NEVER used mastic to set stone
it is not rated for stonework
use only polymer modified white stone thinset
More Related Questions & Answers...