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Kitchen backsplash with moving foundation

3K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  Bigfoot 
#1 ·
We need to put new backsplash in our kitchen and are concerned about using tile because of our moving foundation ($10,000 later it is still moving).

Any ideas? We had wallpaper and tile and the wallpaper moved so much it wrinkled and tore and the tile has separated from the wall. We are open for suggestions.
 
#4 ·
No joking

No, I am serious. We have lived in the house 29 years and are resigned to the movement. We have clay soil and it just moves back and forth with the wet springs and dry Texas summers. I just need to know what we can do to cover the backsplash that would be least affected by the movement. We used paneling in the den and all but the heavy duty stuff buckled. We had to put a steel post to hold up the middle of the cross beam because it was sagging. If we use tile, would the small glass bead tile work better than larger tile like the 4 in stuff we have now?
 
#5 ·
Daniel; This sounds like a job for you! Kinda like that expansive soil they have in Colorado. I have no clue how to deal with that except not to live there.:whistling2:My daughter lived in Loveland CO for a few years and they had the weirdest stuff attaching walls to slabs I ever saw. Nothing was solidly attached.
Sounds like this should have been addressed when this house was first built.
 
#6 ·
We have similar problems here. Mostly the way they constructed the old houses. The walls are beams, the voids filled with brick, old style construction. The beams expand and contract, the walls move. The water table rises and falls the house moves. The only way to deal with it is to plan for the movement. Where the walls meet the roof or floor, leave a gap and fill with a flexible material, paintable silicon or mastic. They actually recommend a 3/8" gap in most constructions, I typically use half that.
A solution is to put up a sheet of drywall, use as few fasteners as possible (lags). Tile on the drywall, use silicon for the seams between the counter and the splash. Leave a gap, so it is relatively free floating. Use flexible thin set and flexible grout. Or you can cover it in vinyl, some of the stuff made to look like tile, isn't half bad. There are various plastic borders that you can use for the exposed ends of the drywall sheet.
Or you can do like I did and use a sheet of water resistant particle board and cover it with counter top material. I'd thought about going with stainless and decided it was over kill.
I have a static engineer come out and look at our house every ten years or so. His answer is always the same, the house will still be standing after you are long gone.
I'm from Califorinia, periodically the land moves, I'm used to it. The last big one I witnessed 35 years ago, the San Fernando valley looked like a rolling sea. The house is still there.
 
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