John Greenwood wrote:

Hi,

The walls in my kitchen are far from square and after fitting my worktop
there are gaps between the worktop and the wall of differing sizes at
various intervals along the 3m length. I didn't have the patience or skill
to plane the worktop to fit the wall.

I don't know the correct way to seal a worktop to the wall but I was going
to seal it to the wall with transparent silicone before tiling. After tiling
should I then run a bead of silicone along the tile/worktop edge or will the
grout be sufficient considering I have already sealed the worktop behind the
tiles.

But now that I have large gaps how do I seal the worktop to the wall or
should I forget this and just tile, bringing the tiles out from the wall
with large lumps of grout to cover the gaps.

Or should I fill the gaps with something and then seal with silicone and
then tile. If so what can I fill the gaps with so the silicone does not just
disappear down the back?

BTW, the exposed chipboard on the worktop edges have been sealed with PVA.

I don't want a rotten worktop in 2 years!



Don't panic. We all have the same problems.

If you are tiling, then you have the perfect finish to solve gap problems.
If you are tliling up to cupboards, its even greater happiness, because
you can just skling some MDF between the cupboards and the worktop, and
tile over the now perfectly flat surface.

Experience of trying to get a suite of vertical tiles flat on an uneven
wal suggests this is a better option.

Somehw you have to bodge out the gaps to get a smooth tiling sufarce.
You camn skim plaster, or use board with various spacings of battens, or
indeed shape the rear of the board itself to fit the wall.

In my case, the presence of a nice gap behind the MDF akllowed me to run
cables where there were none previously, and hide a nasty piece of
trunking...
In fact it looks to neat, I haven't tiled it yet.

If you have almost no movement between worktop and tiles, no need for
silicone either - Just use grout. I am tending to use silicone first to
seal, then tile over, and make grout the final fine finish.






Thanks,

John