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Shoutout to the 1970s tile guy who leveled my bathroom floor with a 2x4 and a bucket of mud
So my bathroom floor gave out two weeks back, not a huge leak but enough that the tile in front of the tub started popping loose every time you stepped on it. I pulled up about 9 tiles to see what was going on and found this old bed of mortar underneath, maybe an inch thick, laid right over the original subfloor from whenever the house was built. The crazy part is it held up for over 40 years, and whatever guy did it back then floated the whole thing by eye with a straight board and a hawk, no self leveling pour, no fancy tools, and it was still flatter than anything I could do now. I tried patching it myself with a bag of thinset and a trowel and let me tell you, I got it so lumpy that two of the new tiles rocked when I set them down. Ended up ripping my patch back out and calling a tile guy in my area who laughed at me and said he sees this in older homes all the time. Now I'm waiting on him to come re float the whole thing and I'm out about $600 that I could have just paid him in the first place. Any of you ever run into an old mortar bed like this, and did you try to save it or just gut it and start over?
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vera_roberts8d ago
Learned the hard way on my last flip that you just do not touch those old mud beds unless you have to. I always figured ripping it out and pouring self leveler would be faster and cleaner, then I spent two weekends fighting a wavy floor that still wasn't right. That inch of mortar was doing real work and half of it wasn't even the flat part you see, it was the structure. Now I just patch the loose spots and leave the rest alone.
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