A Guide on How to Prepare Walls for Tile

Having a contractor come in and remove and replace tile for you can be a costly thing; despite this fact, many people hire the work out anything because they believe it will be difficult or time-consuming. The fact of the matter is that you can prepare walls quite easily to make way for the new. Like many home improvement projects, it just involves a little know-how and the right tools for the job. You can do this yourself and save considerable expense! Here's how to prepare walls for tile.

The first thing you will need to do is clean the walls and remove any finishes that may be there already. You should use a scrub brush and mild soap to wash the walls after all finishes are removed, to ensure that dirt doesn't interfere with the new tile sticking to the walls. This is very important! When this is done, allow the walls to air dry. After all, the tile isn't going to stick properly to wet walls, and applying it over the wet wall could lead to mold and mildew (and no one wants that in their home!).

If your walls will not support the weight of the tiles you've chosen, you'll need to install backer board before installing the tile. This should be done after stripping the finish and washing and drying the walls, but before you actually put the tile up. You certainly don't want your wall collapsing because it couldn't handle the weight of a heavy tile you put in!

The last step you'll need to take before installing your new tile is to ensure that your walls are waterproofed. As said previously, water can lead to mold and mildew, as well as structural damage to the wall beneath the tile. If this tile is for a kitchen or bathroom, this is especially important! Using a waterproofer on any walls you don't know are already waterproofed (this should have become obvious while you were washing the walls with soap and water-- you did do that to remove all the dirt, right? A lot of people get lazy and like to skip that step, because scrubbing walls is hard work, but as you can see here it's also an excellent test to see if your walls are already waterproofed or not) is a very good idea to prevent water from seeping in around the tile grout.

Once you've stripped, cleaned, supported, and waterproofed the walls, you're ready to install your new tile! It certainly isn't a job that would require you to call in a contractor; it's a simple job that can save you a lot of money in labor costs.