Submitted 6 months ago by callcc@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/02066b9e-fb5b-4f4f-afc7-a1eca69585a5.jpeg
Hello community, I noticed that this stair step in my european 60ies house was a bit cracked so I broke it off completely. How would you fix this? Some mortar or tile glue? Does it need some kind of rebar?
Super easy.
You need a couple of instant noodles packs & gorilla glue.
My approach would be to chip away any of the remaining substrate that might be loose, scrape it, pick it off, whatever. The goal would be to leave very solid material exposed.
I don’t know the equivalent in Europe where you are, but in the US we have Tapcon screws. They come with a masonry drill bit that you would use to hammer-drill several holes along the exposed material. Then screw in the screws until the head of the screws protrudes an appropriate amount to leave room for whatever is needed above the screw head.
These screws now act as a little rebars to support what you build on top. Looks to me like you might need concrete adhesive, little concrete nub mushed around the screw heads, thinset, then tile, then grout.
Unfortunately those bullnose tiles are always going to be prone to breaking off because they’re jutting out from the stair and are built from materials that are strong in compression, not tension.
Clean the edges and glue them on. Expect them to fail again.
I added a new picture showing how much broke off. This is no simple re-gluing unfortunately.
You can definitely glue it back. It just won’t ever be permanent. Those stairs are made to break.
As others have said, clean existing grout off, adhesive, and grout it again. It will be discolored.
This is totally unhelpful, but I just wantes to say I absolutely love these stairs!
Thx, my wife liked them too, I’m not a huge fan but they came with the house :)
Nah. Easy fix. Break all the tiles apart and clean off the grout. It should scrape off with a little effort. Then clean any loose dry adhesive off the stair. Get as much off as you can. You can purchase new tile adhesive and a small tube of grout at your local hardware store. Apply a layer of the new adhesive to the stair with a putty knife. Then set the clean tiles in place. They should squish into place but not so much that the adhesive fills the gaps between. Let them sit and allow the adhesive to cure overnight. Then squeeze in enough new grout between the tiles until it’s a bit overfilled. Use a grout squeegee and run it across all the tiles at once to remove the excess leaving it flush with the tiles. Then smooth it all to match the existing with a damp sponge. Remove the left behind haze from the grout after waiting a few minutes. If you don’t want to buy a grout squeegee since this is such a small area use whatever you have that is rubbery and rigid yet flexible like a cooking spatula. Once it dries for about a day polish to a nice shine. Boom done.
Nice!
Thanks a lot for your reply! I’m not sure if I get it though. I attached another picture to my post that shows the step from the top. The part missing is a lot of material, I’m not sure how breaking everything up and glueing the tiles back should work. I’m confident that I could somehow model the little structure using some goey material and then glue the tiles back and apply grout but I’m not sure about the stability of this.
i could also just glue the whole block back in place using 2k glue or cement.
Oh snap. I see that now. I didn’t catch that before. If it were me I would indeed try to apply a backer substrate of some type. You’ll just have to look around for something the proper thickness but things that come to mind are backer boars like you would use in a shower tile application or maybe hardy board? Or even attempt to just build it up with concrete but to do that you’d need to create some holes in the base that it sits in so that it has support and something to hold it better. Not sure about that though.
Were you looking to retile and regrout the area or glue it back into place?
You can try sika 11fc.
Yeah, that sounds like an idea, but don’t you think that it might be too elastic? I have never used this glue.
callcc@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Update: I finally fixed the stairs by glueing things back on with flexible tile glue and finishing up with the thing you use to put in the groves between tiles. It seems sturdy until now :)
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