Bathroom & Kitchen Tiling in Dublin

We tank wet areas properly before a single tile goes up

In any shower or wet area we apply a proper liquid tanking membrane (BAL WP1, Mapei or Schluter Kerdi type), with scrim tape bedded into every corner, junction and pipe penetration, carried at least 150mm up the walls from the floor. Tile, adhesive and grout are water resistant, not waterproof, so the real barrier sits behind the tile where you never see it. That is the difference between a shower that stays dry and one that quietly rots the wall behind it.

The right backing board, never bare plasterboard in a shower

Standard plasterboard has a gypsum core that stays vulnerable to moisture even after tanking. In wet zones we fit moisture-resistant tile backer board, check for soft or previously water-damaged sections and replace them, so tiles bond to a sound, stable background rather than a board that is slowly failing underneath.

Solid adhesive coverage and back buttering, so nothing sounds hollow

We comb the bed with the correct notched trowel and back butter dense porcelain to fill the key on the back, aiming for at least 95 percent coverage with no voids near the corners. Dense tiles grip by mechanical bond, not suction, so a skim of adhesive is not enough. Full beds mean no hollow spots, no cracked corners and no tiles lifting under foot traffic later.

Flat substrates and tile levelling clips to kill lippage

Uneven studs, out-of-plumb walls and lumpy floors are what cause lippage, those proud edges you catch with a toe or a mop. We straighten and level the substrate first and use levelling spacers on large-format tiles so every edge sits flush, giving crisp, even joint lines across the whole surface.

Silicone in the corners, clean cuts, and movement joints where they belong

Corners and floor-to-wall changes of plane move, so we seal them with flexible silicone, never solid grout that will crack within a year, and we set proper movement joints on larger floors. For splashbacks and kitchens our tilers cut with professional wet saws and DeWalt power tools for clean, chip-free edges around sockets, taps and hobs, then mix grout to the correct consistency and tool the joints so they shed water instead of trapping it.

Tiling straight onto plasterboard in a shower with no tanking, relying on the grout to keep water out

The cost: Water wicks through the grout into the gypsum board, the wall behind the tiles rots and goes soft, and within a year or two you are paying to strip the whole shower back to the studs and start again

Spot-fixing or skim-coating adhesive instead of laying a full bed and back buttering

The cost: Hollow tiles crack the moment something is dropped or weight lands on a corner, tiles work loose, and water gets into the voids behind them, so you end up re-tiling sections that should have lasted a decade

Solid grouting internal corners and the floor-to-wall joint instead of using flexible silicone

The cost: Those joints move with the building and the rigid grout cracks straight through, opening a path for water exactly where it pools, so the customer sees black lines and leaks and calls someone back to redo the joints properly

Skipping substrate flattening and racing the job, leaving lippage and uneven joints

The cost: Proud tile edges chip, look amateur and catch a mop or bare foot, and the only real fix is lifting and relaying, so a job that was meant to be done once is now being paid for twice