New to forum but need advice on a remodel of a house built in the 1920's. I have an existing wood floor in a room with sub-floor that totals one inch thickness. I am planning on making this a new kitchen and having cabinets installed (lower cabinets only). I plan on using slate as the flooring.
First question: Is existing flooring adequate without adding additional plywood base to install slate?
Second question: Should I lay flooring before or after installation of cabinets?
Before you lay the slate you will need to install a cement backer board to the existing floor.
After the existing floor is clean of all debris you trowel on a layer of thin set mortar then place the backer board on the mortar and screw the backer board down to the existing flooring material. There are 60 screws per sheet and a sheet covers 15 square feet. After the thin set has dried (24 hours) you can lay the slate tiles with thin set.
Never should any sort of tile be directly applied to wood sub floors.
If it were me I'd tile the entire room before the cabinets are set in place.
To save a little money you could always mark out where the cabinets will sit and tile just a little past this area, that way the cabinets will look like they sit on a full floor of slate.
Agree with cement backer board and always install floor material under the cabinets. If you need a good slate supplier, I used Vermont slate for roofing, floor tile, structural use and more -- they have prepackaged boxes where they put together random looking patterns with varying sizes, but show you how to assemble the pattern and provide precut sizes. Very cool -- and it was a little less expensive than a local supplier, so good deal all around.
Installing slate
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