Floor tiling in Upney, Barking. Kitchen, hall and utility floors laid level with the subfloor prepared and the layout set to the room.
Upney has a mix of interwar terraces and later flats, and the floors underneath them are equally mixed: solid screed in some, suspended timber in others, and a fair amount of both in the same house where a kitchen has been extended at some point.
The base decides the job. Screed gets checked for level and latexed where it dips. Timber gets an overlay or an uncoupling membrane, because boards move with the seasons and tiles do not. In a flat, the floor build-up also has to leave the doors working and respect whatever the lease says about acoustic layers.
Layout is set from the longest view in the room, with the cuts pushed to the least visible wall. In a galley kitchen that usually means running the tiles the length of the space so it does not read as a corridor of grout lines.
Upney is flats as well as houses, and a first-floor kitchen floor in a Barking block has its own rules: the build-up has to leave the door swinging, and anything the lease says about acoustic layers has to be respected before the tiles go near the floor.
Adhesive is combed and the tile back-buttered on anything large, because voids under a floor tile are where cracks begin. Tiles that sound hollow when tapped, grout cracking in the same line twice, or a floor that gives underfoot are worth looking at before anything new goes over them.
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Dips latexed out so the joints line through and the floor sits flat.
Seasonal movement taken out between boards and tiles.
Door clearances and any acoustic requirement checked before the build-up is decided.
Especially in galley kitchens, where the direction of the run changes how the space reads.
Combed and back-buttered so nothing is left unsupported.
Trims at the thresholds and a clean line where the tiles meet the units.
Yes - we tile up to and under the kick boards, which is normal practice and keeps it affordable.
Walk on it after 24 hours; appliances back after 48.
We check the build-up first and ease the doors if the new floor raises the level.
On a floor, yes. It is denser and copes better with dropped pans and heavy traffic.
Yes, with the lease requirements and any acoustic layer taken into account before we start.
Upney, Becontree, Barking, Thames View and nearby.