I had a water leak in my bath whci had engineered wood installed. I want to now apply ceramic tile over the engineered wood if possible? The wood is glued to the concrete floor.
one option is to use hardee board if you dont want to pry all the wood up and scrape concrete clean. its a masonary type board that comes in sheets similar in size to ply wood. its pretty easy to work with and you'll have to glue it down on the wood over the concrete floor. you can cut it with a special mason blade in an old circular saw or just score it with a 5 in one painters tool as ive done many times. it hase strands of string inbedded into it. you can use a heavy duty utility knife to finish cutting thru. after its glued down and has set for about 24 to48 hours to dry and adhear to flooring you can apply thin set with special trowel and set tile. some tile has little bumps on the sides so spacers are not needed but most will use 1/4 or3/16 inch cross spacers applyed at intersections. not all your tile will be straight rows. you can rent a wet saw with a diamond blade. the saw runs water over the blade to keep dust down and to keep it cool due to build up of friction. you can also get a carbide scribe cutting tool, no power needed, no water mess and easy to use. you'll start by finding the center of the room to be tiled and make an x with the intersecting lines running parallel to the opposing walls. it doesnt have to go from wall to wall just 2 to 3 feet each way start your till using this as your guide and git a good square block of many tiles going. dont spread to much thinset or glue as it dries fast and you want the tile to stick realy well. the trowel you use will have v notch's, when you go get tile and glue ask what size v notch you need. it varries depending on the size of tile used. press the tile firmly down and sorta in towards center of room as you set the tile, this helps to make sure you keep every thing aligned. after the tile sits for 48 hours to set you can grout it. its kinda messy but fun. where rubber gloves, the grout is a mortar and the chimicles will dry your hand out.
It is not a good ideat to install ceramic over an engineered floor. Wood is not stable enough for ceramic, as minor movement will cause the ceramic to crack. The wood must be removed, and if the floor underneath is concrete you will be fine. If it is a wood subfloor, a concrete impregnated plywood must be installed first. (Such as Hardi-backer or Wonderboard) I am in the business, and if a customer insisted on installing ceramic on top of an engineered floor, as much as I like selling this stuff, I would turn the job down.
