Bathroom tiling in Beam Park, Rainham. Walls and floors tiled to a new-build standard, with waterproofing behind the shower done properly.
Beam Park is new housing, and new bathrooms come with a specific problem: the walls are plasterboard, they look perfect, and people assume they are ready to tile. A painted plasterboard wall behind a shower is not a waterproof surface, however new it is.
Where the tiling is going into a shower enclosure, the board gets swapped for something that can take water, or the surface is primed and tanked with the joints taped. It adds a little to the job. It is also the difference between a bathroom that is still sound in ten years and one that quietly wets the wall behind it.
The upside of a new-build is that the walls are flat and square, so the setting out can be ambitious: large format tiles, full-height runs, a stack bond that would look wrong on a wall that leans. The standard people expect in a new home is high, and flat walls let you meet it.
Floors are usually screed over beam and block or a chipboard deck upstairs, and the treatment differs: one is ready once it has dried, the other needs decoupling. It is worth knowing which you have before ordering anything. Tiles that sound hollow when tapped, grout cracking in the same line twice, or a floor that gives underfoot are worth looking at before anything new goes over them.
Board swapped or the surface tanked and taped, regardless of how new the wall is.
Large format and full height look their best where the wall is true - which in a new-build it usually is.
Screed once dry, chipboard with a decoupling layer.
Drying times respected before tiling, rather than tiling to a schedule and regretting it.
Cut around cleanly so faceplates sit flat.
Floors covered and the room cleaned down - it matters more in a house nobody has lived in.
Priming as a minimum, and proper waterproofing where the shower goes. New does not mean water-resistant.
New properties dry out and settle for a while. It is worth a conversation about timing rather than tiling the week you get the keys.
Tiling is a finish. Where we alter board behind a shower we do it properly and tell you what was changed.
Yes, and in a new bathroom with flat walls it usually looks better than stopping halfway.
Larger tiles suit flat new-build walls and mean fewer joints to keep clean.
Beam Park, Rainham, South Hornchurch, Cherry Tree Lane and nearby.
Send a photo or a quick video of the room on WhatsApp. Or ask for a free fixed quote with no obligation. We will tell you straight what it needs.