blocking for shelves on tile wall
Hi, I’m building a floor to ceiling tile wall in bathroom that will be for asthetic reasons only. It will be 16 inches or so away from a free standing claw foot tub so I don’t expect it to see any real moisture other than vapor. Currently it’s 2×4 studs 16 oc. I will be mounting small floating shelves after everything else is finished and it is hard to anticipate exactly where they will be. In fact we don’t even have them yet. Chances are they will be junk shop brackets with glass cut to size. All TBD.
So my plan is to just go with 5/8 ply on the enitre wall (which is less than 80″ long) so that I can put screws wherever I (meaning my wife) wants.
I was then going to go over the ply with cement board. I do not plan on tiling stright to the ply. I know people do that but it doesn’t sound great to me.
Question is- I know when preparing a floor for tile the best thing to do is to spread thin set on the sub floor then screw the cement board down only to the ply and not to the joists.. Should I do this to the wall I’m talking about? I’d prefer to skip the thin set between the ply and cement board.
And also how imporatnt is it to screw only to the ply and not the studs?
Replies
by skipping the thin set prior to the cement board you are basically tiling over plywood,
the fastening schedule for those things is pretty specific, and should follow it, in my opinion you are wasting your money if you are not going to set the cement board in thinset, so skip the step all together. you will get so little movement on the 5/8'' plywood on a wall that it wont be an issue.
if you do put up cement board, thin set or not you should follow the fastening schedule on the board and not your stud locations.
thanks for the reply
I just need a little clarification- USG's website has a fastening schedule of 8" OC for wood framed walls at 16" OC. So that makes enough sense for that application.
What I don't really understand is this....If I were screwing directly to the studs there would be no adhesive (thinset) of any kind and seams would be falling directing on the centers of framing members. And this would be fine.
But as soon as I sandwich plywood in between the cement board and the studs the rules completely change. Why is that?
What is the advantage of the thinset btwn the cement board and ply in my application?
And since the wall is short I would only have one horizontal seam in the ply layer...no verticals. And because of the sizing of the cement board (3X5) I would not end up on that same horizontal seam.