Tile Floor Installation in Wilmington, DE

A bathroom floor takes splashes, drips, and the occasional overflow, and the water that gets past the grout or a failed toilet seal soaks the subfloor below. A rotted toilet flange takes the surrounding wood down too. When the old floor comes up, the rotted wood is cut away before any new layers go on. Tile also raises the floor, so the toilet flange has to sit on top of the new tile, or the toilet will not seal reliably. Small rooms mean many cuts around the tub, toilet, and door casing.

When the shower is being rebuilt, the floor and shower are planned as one job, so the floor tile meets the shower curb cleanly.

An entry floor takes grit, wet shoes, and the heaviest foot traffic in the house. Porcelain suits it because it is dense and wears well, and a tile with a textured surface is less slick when wet. Two heights set how a foyer works: the entry door has to swing clear over the new floor, and the tile has to meet the hall floor at a threshold you won't trip on. Both are measured before anything is torn out.

A kitchen is a large open floor, and the middle of a long room is where the joists bend farthest under load. The cabinets set the second limit. Tile run up to the cabinet toe kicks raises the floor in front of the dishwasher, and a dishwasher that just fit under the counter can be trapped once the floor is higher. That opening, along with the range and refrigerator spaces, is measured before you choose a tile thickness.

The pattern of the damage shows where the problem is. A crack that runs in a line across several tiles follows movement below it: a seam in the subfloor or a joist that flexes. That kind of cracking starts below the tile, so the floor is opened, the subfloor is fixed, and the tile is relaid. A single cracked tile indicates an impact or a hollow spot beneath it, and a tile that sounds hollow when tapped has lost its bond to the mortar. An uncoupling membrane allows for small sideways movement; cement backer board provides the thinset with a stable surface. Neither one stiffens a bouncing floor. That stiffness has to come from the joists and the subfloor.

Before sheet plywood took over, subfloors were laid as individual boards nailed across the joists, and a row home in one of those neighborhoods may still sit on board subfloors. Each board swells, shrinks, and flexes independently, and tile laid straight over boards cracks along the board seams, so a layer of plywood goes over the planks first. The joists under a plank floor may have been notched for drains and wiring, which takes stiffness out of them right where a bathroom floor sits. The 1990s and 2000s houses across Bear, Hockessin and Newark sit on flat plywood or OSB subfloors, which take tile well when they are dry and stiff. OSB swells at its edges where it has stayed wet around a leaking toilet or beside a dishwasher, and a swollen edge has to be cut out before tile can lie flat over it.