Tile Basement Floor

[zman]

Hellow everyone

I 've been busy with work I hope everyone had a good holidays

I have been working on my basement and me and my wife are thinking about tilling the basement floor

Has anyone done their floor ? I would like to tile right on the cement floor .

The house is a year old and I probably won't be tiling till next year as I am at the drywall stage now.

Edited January 10, 2007 by zman

[Eddyk]

Ijust tiled my basement floor a month ago. It is a concrete floor. Just make sure it is sealed. If it isnt you can buy sealant at Home Depot. I used the peel and stick tiles which I also got at Home Depot.

[mason05]

What eddyk said about sealing it first. I'd lay ceramic tile though. Longer shelf life.

 

Corn Nug

[lookinforwalleye]

Tile floor in the basement = cold feet but like Eddyk said make sure you seal the floor with proper sealer not just paint even still if your basement has high humidity or dampness you may have problems with the peel and stick variety tiles.

You may want to consider cork flooring i have it in my bedroom and it is nice and warm and it is easy to keep clean, i don`t know if it suitable for the basement you`ll have to check that.

[Puckhead]

Tape a square foot of some aluminum foil at various spots on your concrete (wall and floor). Give it a day or two and peel off. If your concrete is still sweating or there are moisture problems, the underside of the foil will be damp. That will tell you right away what type of flooring you can use. Any stone based or ceramic is fine straight over sealed concrete. I would prefer a thin subfloor put in first. Home depot has a couple of snap and click subfloor slats designed for such a thing. If you don't have any real moisture issues and you are fine with cold floors, tile away without the subfloor. If you can wait though, let the house settle a bit (new house I'm assuming), especially if you are straight over the concrete and are doing large vis. areas. The floor can still crack and rise/drop a bit as it settles.

[fisher]

Have you thought about laminate flooring instead of tiles??

 

We did our basement last year (also a fairly new house - about 5 years old) and went with a thick, laminate floor that ended up costing about $3/square foot (including the floor and plastic sheeting beneath teh floor to keep moisture out). Bought at SAM's Club. I installed 1100 square feet of it myself in one weekend...very easy to do.

 

I must say that we are very happy with it - very warm, durable and comfortable to walk on, as opposed to going with a tile material.

 

Esthetically, we chose to go with a laminate flooring that were strips, rather than large sheets. The strip make it look more like the real wood strip flooring - with grooves between the strips. At first we were worried that dust woudl get caught between the grooves, but that is not an issue at all.

 

Good luck.