Bathroom Floor Underlayment – Part 2

In Part 1, I talked about laying down the heated mats. After the mats were down and ready, it was time for the self leveling compound. Self leveling compound is essentially just a really liquidy concrete that you pour over a floor to smooth out the surface and, in our case, encase the heated flooring wires. Since the concrete is so liquidy, we had to dam up the walls with a bead of spray foam. The Great Stuff. So handy!

After the foam was dried and cleaned up a bit, it was time to level. But, before the self leveling compound, we needed to prime.

This is the product used to prime the floor for the leveler.

We rolled that on the floor with a 3/8 inch nap roller and a brush for the corners. The one bottle was just enough for the space which is about 11.5 x 6.5 feet less the 32″x60″ shower pan.

The Primer was supposed to dry for 2-4 hours but not more than 24 before adding the self leveling compound. If we were normal, we would have watched TV, relaxed, while waiting for the primer to dry. Instead, we put down a new floor. You know, since we were waiting. 3 exhausting hours later and it was time. We mixed up the self leveling compound. We used 2 bags which was just enough for the space though it would have been nice to have another half a bag or so. There is only a 10 min window for smooshing it over the surface so forgive the lack of in-progress pictures…I was busy. We used a big window washing squeegee which worked great.

The stuff is super liquidy so you basically want to push it around in to the corners etc. I’d also recommend mixing the whole amount all at once if you can. We did one bag at a time and the first was almost done with it’s 10 min by the time the second one was ready to be poured. The other thing we learned is to stop touching it. The “younger” it is when you are done the better. It’s wetter and much better at leveling itself.

Since you have to work so fast, it is a quick project and we were back to flooring in no time. I am very excited and looking forward to next steps, like installing residential glass. I have found a great contractor offering residential glass Houston Tx and cannot wait till they start the works.

The great stuff barriers worked great. After a day it’s dry and we were able to clean up any foam that is in the way of our tiling.

Stay tuned for Part 3 – Setting the Tile. My mother will be here to help. I’m excited!

Sarah