First time tiling. Walls are a nightmare. Any tips?

[Michaelsf90]

The walls are ridiculously out in my bathroom. I had a tiler but he was really poor. Just stuck the tiles on. No levelling off and checking lipage and adding more adhesive to pack them off. I have a plumber coming Saturday so I got left in limbo and had to take the job on myself. No experience at all

Tiles are 500 x 250 ceramic. The walls are that bad as you get to the ceiling the adhesive is 20mm thick. Even then the tiles level on the vertical. I've got to the window and the tiles are that far from the window the trim can't be fixed or bedded in. So I'm fixing some wood up to hold the trim. It's just been a nightmare. Has anyone else experience nightmare walls like mine?

 

[RrogerD]

Is your wall consistently out of plumb or just a complete mess all over?

If the latter then the best bet would be to have it re plastered so at least flat for tiling. Be aware though that they'll likely choose to board over and skim rather than use a bonding coat, for speed and ease so, unless you hack off all of your old stuff you're going lose a good few cms.

If the former, the walls are flat but just not vertical then you can pack out with hardi-backer etc. Screw the boards to the wall, they come in varying thicknesses and then tile. This'll at least reduce the quantity of adhesive needed.

 

[Michaelsf90]

The tile are already on. As you said I'd have to rip existing boarding off and redo. Being a first for me I'm just frightened of the tile falling off. They're stuck solid but the tiles are 10mm thick. Existing were 5mm but obviously we didn't know until we took them off. So the new tile are heavier. I just hope the thickness of adhesive isn't going to cause a problem

 

[Deleted member 292770]

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[opps]

I feel your pain.

A close friend once asked me to tile his bathroom with 600*200mm porcelain tiles. He had had the walls re-plastered but the plasterer clearly didn't care a jot about the walls being plumb.

It took me about 2 hours to fit the first tile. I had to use 1800mm spirit levels to make sure that I would not need to kick the tiles out as I went up the wall.

In some places I had to double pack the lower tiles.