Tile Installation & Repair in Durham, NC

Choosing which line to trust

Durham has the oldest housing stock on our list, and in a kitchen or bathroom from the 1900s to the 1930s, tiling runs into a problem that does not exist in new construction: there is no straight reference to work from.

In a century-old house:

• The wall leans slightly, and probably not by the same amount along its length
• The floor has settled, so the worktop that was levelled to it is not level any more
• The cabinets were fitted to some compromise between the two, by somebody making their own judgement
• The window opening beside it is square to none of the above

Every one of those is a possible line to set a tile layout from, and they disagree with each other. Choosing wrongly is what makes an otherwise well-executed backsplash look wrong.

Where the eye actually looks

The useful principle: set out true to the line people read, and hide the error where they do not look.

In a kitchen, the line people read is almost always the underside of the wall cabinets. It is horizontal, it is continuous across the run, it is at eye level, and it is the boundary the tile terminates against. If the top course of tile is visibly tapered against that line, everybody sees it, every day.

The line people do not read is the worktop junction. It is low, it is in shadow, there is a sealant joint there anyway, and it is broken up by the sink, the hob and whatever is standing on the counter.

So the layout gets set level and true to the cabinet line, and the variation is taken at the worktop, where a slightly wider or narrower sealant joint absorbs it invisibly.

The same logic applies elsewhere:

Behind a cooker, where a full-height section frequently goes, is a good place for a run to lose a few millimetres.

Into an inside corner, where two walls meet, is much more forgiving than terminating in open wall.

Against a window reveal, where the reveal itself is out of square, the honest answer is sometimes to scribe the tile to the reveal rather than fight it.

Bathrooms in old houses

The same problem, with the added complication that the surfaces are frequently mud-set.

Mud-set means a mortar bed. In houses of this period, original bathrooms were tiled onto an inch or more of cement floated over wire and lath. It is far more durable than modern thin-set on board — those hex floors and small-format wall tiles have lasted ninety years — and it is much harder to cut into or match.

The first honest thing to say about a sound mud-set bathroom is that it is worth thinking hard before removing it. Replacing it with a modern installation is a downgrade in durability, even if it is the right decision for other reasons.

Where it is damaged, it can be repaired. Cutting in without cracking the surrounding field takes patience, and the patch has to be built back up to the full thickness of what was removed.

Matching vintage tile. Not made any more. Salvage is sometimes possible, common hex sizes are sometimes still produced in something close, and a donor tile taken from inside a vanity or behind a pedestal is frequently the cleanest answer. We will tell you honestly what a match will look like.

Rental turnovers

Durham has a lot of let housing and tile is a routine turnover item: a cracked floor tile, failed sealant round a bath, grout that has had a decade of tenants.

A whole property booked as one visit costs considerably less than item-by-item call-outs, and it is worth doing the sealant properly at the same time — the joint where a bath or shower tray meets tile is the one that fails repeatedly and it is nearly always because it was grouted rather than sealed.

The corner rule, wherever you are

Applies in every house of every age: grout does not belong in a corner.

Wall-to-wall junctions and the line where a wall meets a shower floor or a bath both move. Rigid cement grout has no give, so it cracks, and it cracks again however carefully it is replaced. Those joints want a flexible sealant colour-matched to the grout.

It is the most commonly missed detail in a bathroom and the reason people regrout the same corner three times.

South Durham and Woodcroft

The newer end of the city is ordinary modern work: thin-set over cement board or membrane, flat walls, square corners. Backsplashes, floor tile and shower repairs behave the way the manuals say they will.

Where we stop

Regrouting, flexible joints, tile replacement, localised repair, backsplashes, floor tile and shower tile with proper substrate preparation are our work. Shower pan replacement involving the drain, plumbing behind a wall, structural floor repair and anything requiring a permit go to a licensed trade.

Getting a price

Photograph the whole wall or floor, and — the useful one in an old house — hold a spirit level against the worktop and against the wall and photograph both. That tells us what we are setting out against before we arrive.

Durham is about thirty-five minutes from us, with no travel surcharge.