1st Gen. Lunch Table - General Discussion

OK, so if I wanna quote people on here, I can only do short quotes. If it's longer, I have to get on chrome to do it. It appears my ad-block browser is being dumb.

 

I do a lot of LV work. I've got a plethora already, thousands, multiple colors, sizes, styles...

I'm seriously thinking I'm just going to get some packs of Amsoil Severe Gear 75w/90 and do my diffs. I'm sure they've never been touched.

 

There's a job you'll never catch me doing. I hate drywall also, but tile takes the case.

Good, quality tile guys are impossible to find these days. If you want to venture out there and do your own, props to you. I'll always pay someone else.

Some people find it cathartic. I find it aggravating.

 

I helped a buddy tile his kitchen once. Floors were easier than walls.

 

The last people we hired to tile our backsplash were so annoying, my wife wanted to shoot them. New York transplants. I'm going to gut and tile our basement bathroom soon. I've never done it before but determined to learn.

 

Mangle away. Be sure and get pics. We like pics. Like, a lot.

 

I mean ... I get it. Let me ask you some stuff, because I've refinished our basement, one half at a time, 2BR / 1 BA added, and in hindsight I wish I'd done things different, but more than anything, I wish someone would've asked me these questions so I'd have known to do something different.

Is your basement fully subterranean?

Are there any hairline cracks in the walls or slab? Is there a split where the vertical wall meets the slab?

Have you taken a sample of the humidity during the spring, summer, fall, winter months to ensure that even during the worst consecutive rainy days, RH stays under 60%?

Have you sealed the walls and/or floor with a sealer like Drylok, Hydroban, Redgaurd or similar moisture barrier yet?​

If you answered "yes" to the first couple questions and/or "no" to the last couple, you may want to hold off for a minute.

I did take time and money to pay an engineering firm to drill/fill/Hydroban a couple of vertical hairline cracks in my wall that were weeping. But if I could go back and do-over anything in my house, I'd have Redgaurded my floors and Drylok'd walls before dropping LVP on the floor and drywalling it in.

Not because I have moisture problems - I sit right around 48-58% RH after Finishing depending on the weather outside (I have a dedicated monitor). But I've definitely had some moisture (vapor) come up through the corner of the slab on one of my walls. It allowed some bacterial growth, which is benign (and now treated to never happen again). I know my RH would climb up into the 70%s RH prior to doing any work, and anything over 60-65% RH you'll have mildew issues. It'll seat in anything wood or leather.

Anyway, seal if you haven't. Learn from my mistake. This is my 1st house with a basement, 1st house with more than 1 story.

That said, understand also, subterranean homes just don't tend to vent off moisture like others. So if you opt for tile, seal the substrate with Redguard and a good exhaust fan (Panasonic makes killer low-noise-high-CFM units!) to pull moisture out, use greenboard + hardybacker in the right places, and prepare to fight mildew in your shower grout. You may want to drop $$ into composite marble (crushed marble, reformed) instead. LuxStone is one of many shower wall products out there.

Last warning: Radon is a real problem up and down the Applachians. My monitor also checks for that. My neighbor hovers on average around 4.0 for radon, which is into the lung-cancer-risk range. In my basement 4 houses away I average ~1.8 and hadn't gone over 3.1 after months of monitoring until last wednesday when I hit a 4.4.

Hindsight is 20/20. Happy to shoot the shit about what I've learned the hard way ...

 

Why would the radon not be constant?

 

I’ve tiled something in every house we’ve owned. Like most jobs, it’s all in the prep as @shifty` has eluded to. Get the appropriate tile for your application. Use the appropriate thinset / mortar. Use the appropriate trowel. Don’t get in a hurry and don’t be afraid to pull a few up and redo if necessary. The tile will “float” around until the thin set dries. The spacers help keep grout lines straight and even. Get a decent tile saw, works great for beginner tilers vs the scoring apparatus. It’s messy though. Also a Diamond blade on a smaller handheld tool is helpful for “custom” cuts. Be sure to get minimum 10% extra material for the job. Tiles break easier than most materials. If the floor isn’t dead nuts level, use a quality floor leveling product to get it there. Nothing worse than lumpy bumpy tile floors to catch a shoe on.

 

It's a gas that naturally comes up from the soil. It tends to get concentrated in the basement, and can increase or decrease depending on how much water is in the soil, and how much vapor is released through or around your slab. It tends to build and accumulate in basements because they inevitably have cracks in the slab, or where the slab meets the floor, and don't always have great upward/outward ventilation. Radon is the #2 cause of lung cancer, just behind smoking.

It just so happens we folks along the eastern mountain range have higher levels of radon coming up from the soil than other places. You left-coast folks don't have a lot to worry about there. EPA's radon map: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/documents/radon-zones-map.pdf

 

All that tile talk, if it were me, I’d LVP all day over another tile floor. So easy. Doesn’t transfer temperature through like concrete or tile floors. Easy to lay. Easy to repair of it gets messed up. Very durable if you buy good product.

 

Oooh, and here's an interactive radon map if anyone wants to really drill down on their location:

https://gispub.epa.gov/radon/

 

And good glue. I personally love Taylor's Pinnacle (2091) adhesive. The stuff is bulletproof. You'll need a 1/16" notch trowel to install. It bonds with any water that wicks up to harden, similar to how POR-15 does. (link) Adore flooring has a 'Naturelle' and 'Naturelle Plus' line that's great for basements. Thick tread area. Hi-res printed planks with really natural looking prints. (link)

I think I have some pics of my stuff when finished. Let me dig up.

 

I’ve only used the “floating” style LVP installs. No glue needed. Floor comes with the backing on it. Tongue and groove style assembly. Waterproof when installed correctly. The overall weight of the floor when assembled and the perimeter trim is what holds it down.

 

look at Schluter Systems. you'll thank me. \

(I was in construction management for 5 years. Inspected literally hundreds of tile showers in apartment buildings we remodeled)

 

In hindsight, it probably would've been easier to do it that way, less messy. I do like the glue-down stuff though, the couple of planks we've had to cut up weren't horrendous to remove, and dropping in a new one was a no-brainer.

Here's where we ended up with the LVP in the basement. The guys who installed this half didn't do as good of a job as I did with the half I installed, but ... that seems to be the case everywhere these days. You want it done right, with extra attention, do it yourself, else you'll kick yourself about every flaw you find later.

 

Yes! We used Schluter for all of our tile edges, in-wall boxes, and around our fireplace hearths. Makes a good in-floor thin border, and a raised edge to conceal the sides.

(Bonus if you find the super-aggravating tiling mistakes on both of the mosaic tile sections... Two different tile guys, at least one mistake is same on both, and the joins and lack of seal on the Schluter pisses me off, just not enough to seal & repaint)

 

LVP in our last house:



in our current remodel:

 

Is this the same guy that sunk his best gen at the boat ramp? That video was epic

 

you need some painting that look like windows. You could have a wall that looks at the canadian rockies, a wall that looks out of a high rise, a wall that looks at hawaii...

 

Yup, same guy!!!!

https://youtu.be/QSXpgsWbi44

 

All of this, and I will add; when it's time to pick out tile, larger size - good for flat surfaces. For a shower floor that you'll slope to a drain, you're going to want small tiles to be able to contour to the sloped floor. Where I live, we hot-mop all showerpans, and about a foot up the wall. Paper, hardibacker then redguard on the walls. Oh and dont forget to plan out any benches ad/or niches you may want, BEFORE you seal it in. With the tile; take your time, plan on breaking a few, know that broken tile is razor sharp. Avoid the voids. Airspace under tile-bad. Quality thinset will offer better adhesion, last longer and resist cracking better. Youtube is your friend. There are techniques to spreading thinset with different notch-trowels. Good luck. One last thing, a perfectly flat smooth level surface is simple to cover. When you have to adjust the amount of thinset you're spreading to compensate a sloppy bumpy surface, or using thinset to correct an out of level floor, or an out of plumb wall, that's where it will get away from ya. Better to shim your hardibacker than float it out with thinset.

 

You are getting way ahead of me. I haven't done anything yet.

Send me a link to this monitor. I have some Radon tests sitting on my desk that I haven't opened yet. What can one really do about Radon though? Looks like my county is Zone 1, the worst.

That's the plan for the rest of the basement which has old carpet. Wife wants tile in the bathroom.

That's exactly what I wanted to ask about. It sounds like I should buy a roll of Schluter Ditra and put that down first, before laying my tile on the slab. Correct? Some guy on that tile floor said I should paint the slab but that didn't make any sense.

 

this is also LVP

 

This is the bathroom I'm gutting. I was considering just reusing the existing shower pan. Wife said she'd be cool with that to save money and make it easier.

 

Mine is z1 also. I went with AirThings View Plus. Yes, it's spendy but it literally checks everything: Humidity, VOCs, CO2, PM, all of it. https://www.airthings.com/view-plus

And it puts access in a super-easy-to-use smartphone app. They log historical data for you to review. User interface is a breeze. Setup is easy as pie. And it's portable so you can move it around the house as needed. Although for radon they tell you the longer you can leave it in one spot, the better.

And as far as what you can do, EPA site gives more instructions, but because it's a gas, you just need to find a way to vent it. That could be a low-RPM fan to vent the room outside, it can be a tube that runs up to the attic which will naturally pull air due to temp differentials, anything to get gas moving out of the basement.

I think painting slab is easier, but I've never used Ditra, just Schluter's tile-border products.

Drylok is cheap. Redguard is about the same price per gallon. Ditra, for the coverage, $100 for 54sf, where as you can cover 200sf for the same $$ of Drylok.

Our basement is several hundo sf, so ... Ditra wouldn't have been as practical. It looks like it's a way easier solution if you're not going glue-down though.

 

Once I rip out the drywall, my plan was to replace with green board. Any concerns with that?

 

I would go hardybacker / tile board over green drywall.

 

Ok. I found a comparison showing pros and cons for each. Truthfully we will likely never use this shower much. We're just trying to make it look nicer and improve future resale. I'll research tile board more.

 

Always use greenboard in moisture-prone areas. Ideally use hardybacker in wet areas, and coat every inch seamlessly with Redguard to waterproof it before tiling over.

If you need to build your own pan versus using a pre-formed pan, make sure your liner has no cuts or seams going up at least 6", I personally went with 12" in the first shower I built, which was stupid, because the entry curb was 6", but whatever.

Honestly, a 3-piece unit with pan like what I'm showing in my pics above is tasteful, easy install, doesn't leak, easy clean, no mildew issues, comfortable. They make them in all shapes and sizes, shower-only, or shower-tub. Some people think they're cheap, but there's some really easy stuff out there. You can re-use your existing pan.

If you don't love acrylic / fiberglass units and hate the price of poured composite marble-wall showers, there's stuff like Kohler's Choreograph as a DIY thing, or Kohler's LuxStone, with the benefit being, it's impervious, you basically glue the interlocking wall direct to greenboard, over your existing pan if compatible.

(I just had to go through all this shit... it's painfully fresh in my mind)