Tile Installation & Repair in Knightdale, NC

What hollow actually means

Knightdale was a small town until about twenty years ago and is now largely new subdivisions, so most tile here is production work from the last two decades.

Tap across it with a knuckle or a coin. Some of it will ring solid and dead. Some of it will sound hollow, like tapping the side of a box.

That difference is coverage — how much of the back of the tile is actually in contact with adhesive.

Why it happens

Nothing sinister. On a production build the tiler is working to a schedule. Adhesive gets combed onto the substrate, tile gets pressed into it, and the tile is pushed until it is flat and in line. Whether the ridges of adhesive have fully collapsed to make continuous contact across the whole back of the tile is not something you can see once the tile is down.

The result is voids: pockets under the tile where there is air rather than adhesive. On a lot of production installations that is present from the first day, and the tiles have sounded hollow since the house was handed over.

Which hollow tiles matter

This is the useful part, because the answer is not “all of them”.

In a dry room, on a wall: usually not. A wall tile with a void behind it is carrying its own weight and nothing else. Plenty of them sit there for the life of the house. If it is not cracked and not moving, it can be left.

In a floor: worth attention. A floor tile is being stood on. Where it bridges a void, the load has nowhere to go and the tile flexes fractionally over the gap. Tiles crack at the edge of a void, and once one goes its neighbours often follow.

In a shower: act on it. This is the one that matters. Grout is not waterproof — water passes through it as a matter of course and is supposed to reach the waterproofing layer and drain. A void behind the tile is a space where that water can collect and sit, staying wet indefinitely. Over years that degrades the substrate and the bond around it.

Anywhere a tile is already cracked or moving: the void is the reason.

What can be done

Injection. Adhesive introduced through a grout joint to fill the void without lifting the tile. It works in the right circumstances — a modest void, a tile that is otherwise sound and flat, a dry area. It is quick and it is not always appropriate.

Lift and rebed. The tile comes off, the substrate is cleaned back, and it goes down again with full coverage. Slower, and it is the right answer where the void is large, the tile is cracked, or it is a wet area.

We will tell you which of those your situation calls for rather than defaulting to whichever is cheapest for us.

The other production shortcuts worth knowing

Grout in the corners. Nearly universal, and wrong everywhere. Wall-to-wall junctions and the line where a wall meets a shower floor or a bath both move as the house responds to temperature and humidity. Rigid cement grout has no give and cracks there, then cracks again after every regrout.

Those joints want a flexible sealant colour-matched to the grout. Correcting it is a small job and it stops a recurring annoyance permanently.

Sealant at the bath or tray. The single most common failure in a bathroom. Old sealant comes out completely rather than getting a fresh bead run over the top of it, the surface is cleaned and dried, and the new joint goes on with the bath filled so it cures in its stretched position.

No backsplash. Production kitchens frequently hand over with a painted wall between worktop and cabinets. That strip is the most-looked-at surface in the house and tiling it changes the room more per pound than anything else.

Doing a backsplash properly

Two details decide how one looks:

Where it stops. Run it to a natural boundary — the end of a cabinet run, an inside corner, a window reveal. A run that stops part-way along open wall reads as unfinished however neat the edge.

How it meets the outlets. Cover plates should sit flat on the tile face, not on the wall behind it with a shadow gap around them. That usually means packing the electrical box forward by the thickness of the tile so the plate lands flat and the screws still reach.

We fit plates and pack boxes. Anything involving the wiring itself goes to a licensed electrician.

Floors

New construction floors are generally flat and well fastened, which makes them good substrates. Two things still get checked before tiling:

Deflection. Upper floors are wood framed and they flex. An uncoupling membrane between subfloor and tile lets the floor move without cracking the tile.

Flatness for large format. Big tiles are rigid and cannot follow a floor that dips. The larger the tile, the tighter the tolerance, and a straight edge across the floor answers it in a minute.

Where we stop

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

Getting a price

Tap across your tiles first and tell us where the hollow ones are — that costs you two minutes and it is the single most useful thing you can send. Photograph the area, plus a close-up of any cracked tile and of the corners.

Knightdale is about forty minutes from us, with no travel surcharge.