First, don't put glazed or other slippery tiles on an outdoor porch. You will kill yourself when they get wet or icy. You can find some good looking tiles that are specifically designed to be "non-slippery".
Always use a thinset mortar that specifically says "indoor/outdoor" on the bag.
You mus...
Stephanie saw a show where we were tracking down what was causing water to ooze up through floor tiles laid on a basement floor. She wanted to share her very strange experience with water oozing up through floor tiles on the main floor of the house.
She finally discovered that the clothes dryer ...
First use a hot air gun, or hair dryer, to warm the problem part of the tile.
Then carefully lift it slightly beyond the original problem.
Now, clean off the floor and the tile from the years of dust that has accumulated under this slightly curled tile.
Put contact cement under the corner.
Pu...
Elsa Mann shows how she makes tiled tables by hand.
Of particular interest is her homemade extrusion molding process which allows her to create ceramic edge trim for her tables.
She cuts the cross section of the trim into a piece of plywood. Then a clay press above the plywood forces the clay i...
Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:
Category: Adhesives Product: Indoor/Outdoor Carpet Adhesive
Temperature Limitations: Apply when both surface and product are above +18C (+65 F). Store product above -12C (+10 F).
Rain Limitations: Keep ...
I went to the store and bought a box of really nifty 100 percent recycled vinyl interlocking floor tiles, the kind that stand up above a concrete floor and let the water drain through and under. I needed them to keep boxes off of a basement floor where there was occasional moisture -- and I ended...
It may surprise you to hear that despite silicone sealants and the like, neither the grout between ceramic tiles nor the tiles themselves are actually moisture or vapour proof. Wherever water can sit on a tiled surface, or steam can soak into grout, the wood below can be destroyed by moisture see...
Commercial cleaners
There are a lot of tile cleaners, even some grout cleaners on the market such as those shown above or the newer cleaner specifically for grout, Oxy-Grout. They work pretty well if you have a stain on grout that had been sealed before the stain, because the stain will be somew...
When mysterious problems arise in a house the task is to track down the cause – and sometimes encapsulate it.
I built a beautiful new tiled shower, only to discover a hole starting to develop in one tile a few months later! When I inspected carefully, there was nothing that touched the ...
Wood heating appliances get hot -- that's why we use them -- but they also burn down houses. They are only safe if you install them safely.
-- Let's start with the fascinating process of how wood burns;
-- and now let's see how that process can happen inside your walls or floors near woo...
