Tile flooring in University City, MO

The bathrooms in these houses are small, original and heavily used. A U City Tudor might have one full bath upstairs and a half bath tucked under the stair, and both have probably been patched more than once. Tile is the material that belongs there. It is waterproof when it is installed properly, easy to clean, and available in patterns that suit a 1920s house instead of fighting with the rest of it.

It handles the front and back entries too. Salt, slush and cinders come in off Delmar, Kingsland and every alley in between from December through March, and that mix chews up finish on a wood floor. A porcelain landing or mudroom floor takes it without complaint. Kitchens in the postwar houses north of Olive carry large format porcelain well, and a heated mat can go under it where the room sits over an unheated space.

In University City you never really know until you open it up. Original bathrooms often sit on a mud bed over board subfloor, and mud beds are heavy, thick and sometimes cracked from a century of joist movement. Later remodels may have set tile straight onto a thin underlayment that flexes underfoot. We tear out to something sound and rebuild from there rather than tiling over a problem and hoping it stays quiet.

Deflection is the real enemy. Tile fails when the floor moves, so we check the joist span, add blocking or another layer of plywood where it is needed, and use an uncoupling membrane on floors that warrant one. In wet areas we waterproof properly before a single tile is set. That is the part of the job you will never see, and it is the reason the grout is still tight in ten years.

Day one is demolition and haul-away, which in a U City bathroom means carrying a broken mud bed down a narrow stair. We protect the route, the treads and the plaster on the way out. Then the substrate goes together: repairs, underlayment or membrane, waterproofing in the wet areas, and a check with the level before anything is set. Nothing gets tiled on the same day it gets torn out.

Setting comes next, then grout the following day, then caulk at the changes of plane and a final clean. A small bathroom floor is usually three to four days start to finish including cure time. We tell you exactly which days the room is out of service, which matters a great deal when the house has only one full bath, and then we hold to that schedule.