A few questions about bathroom flooring and repair

dsnider420

A friend of mine asked me to give him a hand working on his bathroom. The bathroom was very poorly constructed. It is a really old house so the subfloor was actually rough cut 2x6's laid on the joists. On top of the subfloor was a layer of felt paper, and then carpet was just laid on top of that. Well, you could only imagine the amount of rot he found in his subfloor from the carpet retaining the moisture. He told me that he cut out the rot and repaired the subfloor but now has come to a dead stop on the flooring part. I have never done any of the work myself but have a good general idea of what I am doing. My question is, he wants to use PVC sheeting over the felt paper to provide a better seal for the subfloor from the water. Will i need to use floor leveling compound before putting the tiles down? (peel and stick just as a temporary repair) Do the tiles go directly on the leveling compound or should I lay lauan down before the tiles? I am really at a loss here. I hope you can give me some advice. Thanks for your help. I'm really happy to know that there is a resource out there like this!

SeeDBee

I suggest that you forget about using those peel and stick tiles. I used them in my main bath a year ago and they move all around leaving gaps between the tiles, especially around the toilet where there is traffic.

I put down 3/8 particle board over the sub floor. Tile installation instructions said to use leveling compound which I found to be a big mistake since the floor was level already.

All in all it was a bad experience and I'm about to take it all out and start over either with sheet vinyl or ceramic tile.