Wall to Floor Tiling with no Skirting - Help?! Advice and information on tiling and fixing tiles to a variety of surfaces

[diylearner]

I'm about to start work on tiling my bathroom walls and floor and plan to remove the skirtings so that I can get the wall tiles to meet with the floor tiles. However, I'm not sure if I should lay the floor tiles first and then the wall tiles so that the bottom row of tiles "sit" on the floor tiles, or do the walls first so that the floor tiles butt up against the wall tiles! Can anyone offer some advice?

[rosebery]

The answer is a mixture of your two alternatives. Do the walls first. Start less than 1 full tile height off the floor because the floor will not be level / even. Level batten the wall and tile up from there.

Leave the bottom row of wall tiles until after you have tiled the floor into the untiled section of wall then, after removing the battens tile down onto the floor tiles.

What are you tiling onto - both walls and floor?

Cheers

[diylearner]

Thanks Rosebery, I am tiling onto a wall from which I have stripped old tiles. I have scrapped/rubbed down the walls to remove old adhesive and bits of loose mortar and then sealed it, and am having plasterboard fixed to the voids behind where the skirting used to be so that I can continue the tiling down to the floor.

As for the floor, I have a timber floor so will be laying 12mm WBP plywood on top of it, and then the tiles. All of this I have learned from reading other posts in this forum....think I'd be lost without it!

[plumbbob]

Personally, I prefer to do the floor last, simply because it avoids the possibility of damaging it when doing the walls and cosmetically, it makes no difference either way.

Also, if you leave the last row of walls off, it's going to take longer because you have to wait for the floor to dry before being able to get all the kit out again to finish the walls.

[rosebery]

1st (or higher) floor bathroom?

Make sure that ply is well screwed down (avoiding any pies and cables) and into the joists NOT into the existing boards. Even though you'll be using flexible addy and grout that fllor IS going to move. I'd be tempted to put a decoupling membrane (like Ditra) down as well betwen the ply and the tiles.

Cheers