Is it possible to lay tiles on plywood: choice of material, preparation, waterproofing and masonry. Can tiles be laid on a plywood base? Is it possible to lay tiles on plywood

During the repair, there is always a choice in favor of one or another option. Basically, they are engaged in repairs on their own as funds become available. Since the consequences of this or that choice can be difficult to calculate for a non-professional repairman, some situations arise where it is necessary to combine various, previously incompatible types of coatings. For example, wood and tiles, ceramic tiles on plywood. Seemingly incompatible materials, but modern building materials allow you to "combine the incompatible."

How to lay tiles on plywood?

This option is most preferable for timber frame houses. Since such a structure is lightweight, in the presence of a wooden floor or good logs, boards along the logs are covered quickly and at minimal cost, and the walls are also leveled.

As for ceramic tiles, as a finishing material, they are very popular for both walls and floors. Ideally, the tiles are laid on a screed, but if there is no way to put it, then plywood and tiles are a suitable option.

Professional tilers have been laying tiles on plywood for a long time. Such work is very painstaking and laborious. But not much different from laying tiles on other substrates. The differences mainly come down to the preparation of the foundation.

Features of the base

The plywood base must be at least 22 mm or 28 mm (European standard). If the base is laid out on logs, then the thickness of the plywood sheet is from 30 mm. This thickness ensures the rigidity of the base and prevents the tiles from vibrating and cracking.

Read on for helpful tips on what to do when tiles crack:

Installation and strengthening of plywood flooring

To relieve stress of a solid plywood sheet, it is cut into four squares and screwed to the logs or wooden floor in a checkerboard pattern. Plywood can be fixed to plank or parquet floors,. When attaching plywood sheets to logs, their pitch should be from 30 to 40 cm.

Important. When strengthening plywood sheets, you do not need to save on self-tapping screws: the more often they are strengthened, the less the sheet will bend, which will minimize its vibration.

Such an attachment will prevent the tiles from cracking and will preserve this floor covering for a long time.

Read more: Waterproofing a floor in a wooden house: which material to choose?

When laying plywood, you need to check the horizontal position of its position with a building level.

If there are sheets of smaller thickness, they can be used to cover the floor according to the scheme presented above. To give the required thickness, another layer of plywood is laid on top. Laying is done so that the seams of the upper layer do not coincide with the seams of the lower layer. To give additional hardness, plywood sheets are glued together, and the top layer is additionally screwed on with self-tapping screws.

Important. Since plywood changes with temperature fluctuations or changes in humidity, the sheets are fixed at some distance from each other and from the walls. The distance between the sheets is 0.5 cm, from the walls - 1 cm (the distance can be foamed or covered with a baseboard).

Before laying tiles on plywood, the surface must be thoroughly cleaned and leveled. Grinding is usually used for these purposes.

Remember that when attaching plywood, the caps of the self-tapping screws need to be slightly drowned so that they do not interfere with sanding the surface.

After sanding, the surface must be thoroughly cleaned first with a vacuum cleaner, then with a damp cloth or sponge. Then the surface is primed (preferably at least 2 layers). This will provide waterproofing and additional protection for the wood base.

For rooms with high humidity (kitchen, bathroom or bathroom), moisture-resistant plywood is used under the tiles. Tiles on plywood in the bathroom are laid after an additional layer of waterproofing (for both walls and floors). For waterproofing, a ready-made liquid or powder waterproofing mixture is used.

Preparatory work After the primer or waterproofing has dried, you can start laying ceramic tiles on plywood.

How to glue the tiles?

For laying tiles on plywood, as it is not flexible, which will cause further damage to the tiles due to the movement of the tree.

How, then, to glue the tiles to the plywood?

For these purposes, two-component or silicone adhesives, adhesives for moving bases, parquet glue based on modified silane are used (universal adhesives must be checked on which bases it glues before buying). They provide good adhesion and movement of the joint. In addition, this adhesive serves as an additional waterproofing layer.

Bonding features

Tile adhesive on plywood is applied on small areas, 1-4 tiles in size, but not more than 1 m2 (due to the fact that the adhesive dries very quickly) with a notched trowel, which evenly distributes the adhesive over the wooden base.

The first tile on plywood is carefully laid out on glue, it is lightly pressed, the horizontal laying of its laying is checked with a building level. If there are small deviations, then tap on the tile with a rubber mallet (hammer) and check it again with a level.

The second is laid out on the first tile, and so on. Special crosses or pegs are inserted into the seams between them, which regulate the thickness of the seam.

Advice. The thickness of the seam depends on the size of the tiles that are laid on the plywood. The larger the tiles, the wider the seam, but no more than 0.5 cm.

Then the third and fourth tiles are laid out and aligned with the first two and the floor. Thus, the entire space of the walls or floor is filled with whole tiles, after they have dried, the cut pieces are laid out.

Read more: Wooden floor in the country - do it yourself

The advantage of glue for wood substrates is that it dries very quickly. After a few hours, you can safely walk on the floor and carry out further work.

Important. During installation, protruding adhesive must be removed from the surface immediately so that it does not leave a dark spot.

The process of laying tiles on plywood

After the floor has dried, the seams must be processed (before starting work, all the crosses or pegs must be removed from the seams).

They are treated with a grout designed for this purpose. It can be slightly lighter or darker than the general color of the tile, or traditional white.

It is applied with a rubber spatula with movements directed perpendicular to the seams (for a more complete filling of the seams). Grout is an additional protective layer that prevents moisture from entering the substrate. , they are given time to dry.

After that, the tiles are thoroughly washed with a cloth. You need to wash carefully so as not to wash the fresh grout from the seams and with a light cloth so as not to paint them. Then all the tiles laid on the plywood are rubbed with a dry cloth or sponge. This completes the installation work.

You can see this process in more detail in the video below. We recommend that you familiarize yourself with it (it is short).

If it is difficult for you to do these works yourself, then you can delegate them to a high-quality repair team... All you need to do is leave a request in the form below on the right on our website.

Laying plywood on logs

[Click on the photo
for increase ]

During the repair, sometimes it becomes necessary to combine materials of different structure. For example, this situation can arise when leveling a wooden floor in a hallway with plywood and then tiling it with ceramic tiles. This raises the problem of choosing an adhesive for tiles on plywood.

Technologies

Polyurethane glue - application features
Polyurethane adhesives are synthetic adhesives that are made from substances used to synthesize polyurethanes. Polyurethanes are polymers that are film-forming substances that have increased resistance to the action of gasoline, acids, oils and other aggressive substances.

How to choose a heat resistant tile adhesive
With the help of heat-resistant tile adhesive, ceramic clinker tiles, insulation materials, concrete blocks, natural stone, glass, mosaic panels, wood panels are laid

Frost-resistant tile adhesive for outdoor use. Description and application
Frost-resistant tile adhesive is not afraid of temperature differences, does not deform, has high strength and a high degree of adhesion

Ready-made tile adhesive: application features
When working with ready-made adhesives, complex and dirty work on diluting mixtures is not required, it is easy and simple to lay ready-made tiles on tile adhesive

Two-component tile adhesive. Features of use
Polyurethane two-component adhesives are used for gluing PVC tiles, ceramics, earthenware, concrete, metal, wood, polystyrene on absorbent and non-absorbent substrates, as well as on industrial and sports floors.

An important problem, which is certainly solved when carrying out repairs, is the selection of optimal building materials. Incorrectly selected components can further lead to the fact that the repair will not be durable enough, problems will arise that at first glance are imperceptible. When laying tiles on plywood, it is very important to choose the right adhesive. This is even more important than, for example, the quality of the wood used. The market offers a rich variety of options, from which it is sometimes difficult to choose. Let's consider the most popular types of adhesives, namely elastic adhesive for tiles on plywood.

Features of the glue

The elastic adhesive is called two-component polyurethane adhesive.

It got its name due to the fact that there are two main components in the kit:

special hardener;
polyurethane resin.

They are mixed, after which a very elastic mixture is obtained with outstanding adhesive properties. Mixing two-component tile adhesive on plywood is carried out using a mixer or using a drill with a specialized mixing attachment.

They must be mixed right before use, they must be consumed about half an hour or an hour after mixing.

From time to time they write on the packaging that the mixture dries up for about half an hour, but it is better to wait much longer, up to three to four days, to be sure for sure. The question of whether it is possible to glue tiles on plywood does not even arise when this specialized glue is used. But why is he?

Why exactly this glue

There are reasons that motivate the use of precisely the described glue when laying ceramics. Wood and ceramics have different properties, as a result, they are able to change size relative to each other. This is facilitated by fluctuations in humidity and ambient temperature. If the adhesive composition does not adapt to this, it turns out that noticeable damage may occur, or, even worse, imperceptible, manifesting not immediately, but some time later. It is necessary to provide for the type of adhesives at the stage of the initial selection of materials in order to understand how to glue ceramic tiles on plywood in the most optimal way.

The wooden covering deforms strongly under heavy loads, without the elastic properties of the glue, the tile can come off.

It is important to take into account other features of the compositions, in particular, the tree tends to exfoliate, the composition should not penetrate too far into the material so as not to create additional problems. Before gluing the tiles to the plywood, it is important to deal with this point.

Restrictions

The use of such a composition is not necessarily permissible in all cases. The limitation is underfloor heating, which heats up, which will lead to potential melting of the adhesive layer and violation of the integrity.

Not all similar mixtures are focused on working with ceramics and porcelain stoneware. Having made the wrong choice when choosing a method for gluing tiles to plywood, you can simply lower the quality of the results several times. Look carefully at the labeling on the packaging, it is always indicated there.

Laying principles

Consider an elastic mix approach to wood flooring. Here's how to glue ceramic tiles to plywood like this:

Initially, the wood layer with a thickness of 30 millimeters or more is laid on the logs, carefully fixed with self-tapping screws. You should not place logs too rarely, less than half a meter is not recommended.
The surface of the material is thoroughly cleaned of dust and other contaminants, treated with a tile primer. It is necessary to wait longer until the primer is completely dry, otherwise the result may not be good enough.
The glue is applied to the floor surface (it is recommended to use a notched trowel), leveled so that the layer is small and as uniform as possible.
Next, the composition is applied to the reverse side of the tile, similarly with a small layer.
Laying begins. The material is oriented in the necessary way (optimally in advance, before gluing the tiles to the floor on plywood, mark the surface so as not to get lost in the future), then it is laid and pressed a little to the floor.
When the composition is dry, the grouting begins. For this, a special grout is used. If too much comes out, then it is removed.
The coating is wiped off with a soft cloth and left for a while. About a day after you decide to glue the tile to the plywood (or earlier), it will be permissible to walk on it.

Alternatives

Although elastic adhesive is the main solution in this situation, other alternatives are available. Plain tile mortar does not work well. But it is also realistic to use it if you use drywall as an intermediate coating. Drywall is attracted to the tree with self-tapping screws. The work will be dusty, not very suitable for the kitchen and similar premises.

Liquid nails are a popular alternative. They are applied in the center of the tiles with several points. For grouting, in this case, it is important to avoid cement compositions and use only epoxy ones, otherwise chipping will occur. Is it possible, in principle, to glue ceramic tiles to a cement mixture on plywood? Not desirable.

Silicone sealant is the third, worthy alternative, allowing you not to be afraid of coating fluctuations, except for especially significant ones. It is used together with transparent silicone grout, has good properties.

Polyurethane foam is theoretically applicable, but it is important to take into account that its volume will increase, but due to the fact that the coating is laid without gaps, this effect will be compensated.

Acrylic mixes and acrylic putty are similar to liquid nails in properties, but they need to be applied in a continuous layer, and not pointwise.

PVA is also applicable, but, as a rule, only with thick wood, thin wood will be strongly deformed in the process of moistening.

In some cases, you have to replace the floor or finish building wall structures, and then the question arises - how to glue the tiles to plywood, OSB or chipboard? The structure of the material is significantly different from concrete, and therefore it is necessary to use a special technology of tiling. What is its specificity?

The technology of laying tiles on a wooden surface has its own nuances and differs from traditional cladding

Features of wood-based materials

Plywood, OSB, chipboard and other similar materials consist of wood in the form of shavings or chips, firmly bonded with resins. In this regard, two defining factors should be distinguished that affect the way the tiles are installed:

Resins provide high strength to the board, as well as reduce its moisture absorption capacity. In some cases, you can even do without additional waterproofing and vapor barrier, but this factor also reduces the adhesive properties of the coating. Therefore, laying floor tiles on OSB or plywood in the traditional way is not possible.
The material consists of wood components, which means that it has properties similar to solid wood. That is, with an increase in air humidity, it swells, and with a decrease, it dries up. Thus, the coating is constantly in motion. This can affect the condition of the tile covering and even lead to its destruction.

How, then, to stick the tiles on plywood or chipboard? Is this even possible? Modern manufacturers of building materials have already taken care of solving this problem. To complete the facing of such a plan, you will need a special glue, some auxiliary materials and patience.

Illustration for a flooring project where tiles are to be laid on OSB (also relevant for plywood)

Adhesive selection

First, you need to figure out the choice of the composition for the solution and understand the best way to glue ceramic tiles to plywood and other similar materials. For each of them, you can find a suitable type of solution or purchase a universal version for a tree.

Plywood is often used in a variety of finishing works. With its help, ceilings, floors and interior partitions are finished. The versatility of the material has made it very popular.

Plywood is a versatile finishing material that is mainly used for leveling surfaces.

And in order for all the work to be performed at the highest level, you need to understand the peculiarities of working with this material, in particular, to know how to lay tiles on plywood yourself.

Possible problems

Before you understand the procedure for laying tiles on plywood, you need to study the problems that may arise during the work.

First, veneered plywood can flake off, so it is best to use adhesives that will not penetrate deeply into the material.

Secondly, if you are going to lay tiles on a large-area partition, keep in mind that plywood is a rather flexible material and can deform under heavy loads. It is necessary to do everything so that the tile does not come off when deflected or accidentally hit. Therefore, the most optimal composition for gluing tiles to plywood is elastic adhesives. However, you can use other formulations. Read a brief description of each and choose the one that works best for you.

Back to the table of contents

Material selection

Simple tile adhesive for gluing tiles to plywood will not work. The moisture contained in it will cause the surface of the material to swell and accidental deflection or impact will cause the tiles to peel off. There are several solutions to this problem.

First of all, you can use drywall as an intermediate coating. You need to do the following:

Cut drywall into required pieces.
Pull it to the frame using self-tapping screws or directly through plywood.
Place the tiles on drywall using regular tile adhesive.

However, this technique has its drawbacks. Firstly, cutting drywall sheets is a rather dusty operation. Secondly, certain skills are required to work with tile glue. In addition, this technique is not suitable for the kitchen and cases with the device of small boxes.

When looking for a solution for gluing tiles to plywood, one should not forget about such a thing as liquid nails. It is a thick, all-purpose adhesive that can be used to lay tiles on plywood. It must be applied with several points in the center and in the corners, or with a solid line along the perimeter of the tile. At the time of the setting of the composition, the tile must be fixed. For grouting, epoxy-based compounds are best suited. Cement should be avoided, because when the plywood vibrates, such putties quickly crumble.

When choosing a composition for gluing tiles to plywood, one cannot but pay attention to the silicone sealant. It allows you to provide extremely reliable adhesion of the tile to the surface, and insignificant bends and vibrations of the panels will not lead to the tiles peeling off. Transparent silicone is suitable for grouting. Such a partition will look very presentable. If you plan to use this method in a bathroom or kitchen, then before using liquid nails and sealants, it is imperative to treat the plywood with linseed oil and prime it with a hydrophobic soil.

In order to prepare the tile adhesive, you will need acetone and foam.

Silicone sealant and liquid nails are excellent but expensive formulations. If you are on a tight budget, you can use the following method. You need to take foam and acetone. The polystyrene crumbles, is poured into plastic containers and filled with some acetone. The resulting mass must be applied to plywood or tiles using an ordinary spoon or wooden stick.

Polyurethane foam can also be used as an adhesive. You just need to apply a certain amount of material to the back of the tile and press the tile tightly against the plywood. You don't have to worry about the increase in the volume of the polyurethane foam. Due to the fact that the tiles are laid without gaps, this effect will be absent.

There are also alternative substances. For example, you can use acrylic tile adhesive. It costs less than liquid nails, and when applied in a continuous layer, it is in no way inferior to them in strength. You can use acrylic putty instead of acrylic tile adhesive.

In the case of working with rather thick plywood, PVA can be used. However, it is important that the plywood has such properties that would allow it to not deform in case of moisture.

Back to the table of contents

Preparation Guide

Plywood must be installed in a double layer. This will reduce the risk of the tiles flaking or lying unevenly. It is recommended to use plywood with a thickness of 22-28 mm. It is better if it is glued in 2 layers: this will increase the strength of the structure as a whole. Plywood must be secured to the substrate as tightly as possible in order to minimize the likelihood of deformation.

Before laying the tiles, plywood must be cleaned and primed.

After that, you need to prepare the base for the tile. Plywood is carefully sanded and cleaned. It should be as flat as possible. A smooth, even surface is primed in 2 layers. The next layer can be applied only after the previous one has completely dried. If the tiles will be laid in the bathroom, then the base must be treated with a waterproofing material before priming.

Prepare tools and materials for work:

Plywood. It is best to use sheets 2.5-3 cm thick.
Primer.
Waterproofing film.
Self-tapping screws.
Elastic adhesive.
Crosses for seams.
Spatulas.
Building level.