The economy must be recovering. Contractors aren't returning our phone calls again.
Do any of you tile experts know if ceramic tiles can be laid down over FuturaStone? Is it a matter of just working enough thinset into the FuturaStone and then back-buttering the tile?
Spouse and I are in the early stages of planning the rebuilding of our familyroom. The previous owners slapped it together about 15 years ago by enclosing part of the back lanai. Among their many "expedient construction compromises" was the decision to lay the baseplates down over the FuturaStone-coated lanai. Then, once they'd created a room with a FuturaStone floor, they put down cheap padding and wall-to-wall carpet. Now we're trying to decide how to fix it right. We'd like to end up with ceramic tile to match the rest of the house's floors.
One of FuturaStone's many drawbacks is its affinity for attracting dirt & mold. Another is the tendency for its UV coating to break down in sunlight, releasing sharp little stones out of the aggregate and making the floor uneven.
You would think that such a crappy surface would be easily removed. You would be incorrect, and we're not doing this one by ourselves. A few years ago when we finally gave up on our exterior FuturaStone lanai & sidewalks, the demolition was horrific. There are specialized contractors for this task because the epoxy matrix (below the stone surface) is so stubbornly attached to the concrete. The crew attaches a heavy-gauge razor-sharp 18" scraper blade to the front end of a propane-powered forklift. (Imagine a wood-splitting wedge as sharp as an axe blade.) The forklift does its best imitation of a snowplow moving a partially-melted snowbank-- it backs off, lowers its blade, accelerates, and slams into the FuturaStone coating from the side. It usually spalls off an 18"x8" area and repeats the process ad nauseum. They go through two dozen blades a day. Assistants follow with hand-held electric jackhammers for the corners & borders.
We're going to take the familyroom down to the studs anyway (as well as replace the roof), so racing forklifts around the 15'x30' interior doesn't seem too daunting. However I'm a little concerned about chipping away the FuturaStone and leaving just a 4"-wide layer under the baseplates. Without the rest of the FuturaStone floor that narrow strip might degrade on its own over the years, destabilizing the baseplates and causing the walls to settle another ¼".
The nuclear-engineering-grade answer might be to demolish the entire familyroom (including the studs & baseplates), spend the money to scrape off all the FuturaStone, and start over from scratch by building a new frame on the bare concrete foundation. We're seriously considering this option since we plan to live in this house another 4-5 decades. One reason we're thinking about it is because the baseplates could then be properly sealed against bugs & termites and we could verify that they were properly bolted to the foundation against hurricanes. But the house has been through an earthquake and a hurricane already (plus a dozen storms with sustained 65 mph winds) so this might be excessively [-]anal[/-] cautious.
We know how to clean most of the dirt & mold out of FuturaStone. A professional carpet-cleaner neighbor uses a pressure-washing rotary-scrubbing extractor with 180-degree water that basically converts everything to mud and sucks it out of the matrix. It takes 2-3 washings and it's another horrible mess but the results are quite livable.
Once the FuturaStone is as clean as it's going to get (and after letting it dry out while the roof/walls are rebuilt), we wonder if it'll support thinset and ceramic tile. Has anyone ever tried to do this?
Do any of you tile experts know if ceramic tiles can be laid down over FuturaStone? Is it a matter of just working enough thinset into the FuturaStone and then back-buttering the tile?
Spouse and I are in the early stages of planning the rebuilding of our familyroom. The previous owners slapped it together about 15 years ago by enclosing part of the back lanai. Among their many "expedient construction compromises" was the decision to lay the baseplates down over the FuturaStone-coated lanai. Then, once they'd created a room with a FuturaStone floor, they put down cheap padding and wall-to-wall carpet. Now we're trying to decide how to fix it right. We'd like to end up with ceramic tile to match the rest of the house's floors.
One of FuturaStone's many drawbacks is its affinity for attracting dirt & mold. Another is the tendency for its UV coating to break down in sunlight, releasing sharp little stones out of the aggregate and making the floor uneven.
You would think that such a crappy surface would be easily removed. You would be incorrect, and we're not doing this one by ourselves. A few years ago when we finally gave up on our exterior FuturaStone lanai & sidewalks, the demolition was horrific. There are specialized contractors for this task because the epoxy matrix (below the stone surface) is so stubbornly attached to the concrete. The crew attaches a heavy-gauge razor-sharp 18" scraper blade to the front end of a propane-powered forklift. (Imagine a wood-splitting wedge as sharp as an axe blade.) The forklift does its best imitation of a snowplow moving a partially-melted snowbank-- it backs off, lowers its blade, accelerates, and slams into the FuturaStone coating from the side. It usually spalls off an 18"x8" area and repeats the process ad nauseum. They go through two dozen blades a day. Assistants follow with hand-held electric jackhammers for the corners & borders.
We're going to take the familyroom down to the studs anyway (as well as replace the roof), so racing forklifts around the 15'x30' interior doesn't seem too daunting. However I'm a little concerned about chipping away the FuturaStone and leaving just a 4"-wide layer under the baseplates. Without the rest of the FuturaStone floor that narrow strip might degrade on its own over the years, destabilizing the baseplates and causing the walls to settle another ¼".
The nuclear-engineering-grade answer might be to demolish the entire familyroom (including the studs & baseplates), spend the money to scrape off all the FuturaStone, and start over from scratch by building a new frame on the bare concrete foundation. We're seriously considering this option since we plan to live in this house another 4-5 decades. One reason we're thinking about it is because the baseplates could then be properly sealed against bugs & termites and we could verify that they were properly bolted to the foundation against hurricanes. But the house has been through an earthquake and a hurricane already (plus a dozen storms with sustained 65 mph winds) so this might be excessively [-]anal[/-] cautious.
We know how to clean most of the dirt & mold out of FuturaStone. A professional carpet-cleaner neighbor uses a pressure-washing rotary-scrubbing extractor with 180-degree water that basically converts everything to mud and sucks it out of the matrix. It takes 2-3 washings and it's another horrible mess but the results are quite livable.
Once the FuturaStone is as clean as it's going to get (and after letting it dry out while the roof/walls are rebuilt), we wonder if it'll support thinset and ceramic tile. Has anyone ever tried to do this?