Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - Tiling Wall in bath - wall not flat. How to fix?
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JThiessen
09-23-09, 06:14 PM
Hi, this is my first post on this forum. I am a "too cheap to pay someone else" DIY'er, and have successfully remodeled the bathrooms in 3 houses now, and have always ended up with great tile jobs. I'm now attempting to finish my master bath, in which we have a soaking tub. I gutted the entire bathroom several years ago, and have been slowly trying to get it done. I completely enclosed the tub area in backer board, then proceeded to finish the remaining room with drywall. However, as I was putting the last of the drywall up, I noticed that my existing studs were not very flat at all. I shimmed behind the drywall as best as I could. Unfortunatley, I didnt notice how bad it was when I was hanging the backer board. Long story short - after all the mudding/taping/sanding on the drywall to get it smooth and flat, I have this vertical lip of mud right where my tile is supposed to start (its on each side of the tub). Hope that make sense? Example - if I were to hold a piece of tile on the backer board, the face of the tile would be almost flush with the drywall....It ranges from .1" up to about 1/4" thick.
As I was working the mud and sanding, I was hoping it would end up thin enough that the standard application of thinset would put the tile out far enough so that it wouldn't look bad, but I think its too much. My tentative plan is to trowel on thinset as a filler to flatten out that transition (same as you would with drywall/mud). But I'd like to know if I'm putting my tile job at risk by doing this? Should I embed mesh tape in the thinset to help hold it together? Or should I find something with more glue in it? Worst case scenario - rip out all the backer board, and re-do it? Wife would kill me.......
BTW, the tile is 12x12 marble
As I was working the mud and sanding, I was hoping it would end up thin enough that the standard application of thinset would put the tile out far enough so that it wouldn't look bad, but I think its too much. My tentative plan is to trowel on thinset as a filler to flatten out that transition (same as you would with drywall/mud). But I'd like to know if I'm putting my tile job at risk by doing this? Should I embed mesh tape in the thinset to help hold it together? Or should I find something with more glue in it? Worst case scenario - rip out all the backer board, and re-do it? Wife would kill me.......
BTW, the tile is 12x12 marble
HotinOKC
09-24-09, 04:20 PM
Hmmm....how much lippage, 1/4? 1/8? You can feather out the area with thinset as you say if the lip isn't more then 1/2".
For next time though, instead of shimming, you can sister new 2x4's to the existing to bring flush.
For next time though, instead of shimming, you can sister new 2x4's to the existing to bring flush.