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Tiling over brick chimney

hipaul | Posted in General Discussion on March 11, 2007 06:04am

I’ve got a client who wants to spruce up their gigantic interior fireplace chimney wall (50’s ranch home) and make it look nice. Having not done a lot of tile work I’m wondering whether it’s possible to put mortar and tile directly over the brick, or whether hardibacker (or some other cement board) would have to be screwed to the brick first. I’m not necessarily thinking of taking this part of the project on myself, but I’ve run into this question before and would like to know what to advise them or other future clients.


Edited 3/10/2007 10:50 pm ET by hipaul

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  1. yojimbo2 | Mar 11, 2007 08:07am | #1

    you might try the john bridge tile forum in order to get an answer to your question.

  2. peedee | Mar 11, 2007 06:06pm | #2

    I've seen it done various ways, from just cleaning the bricks with TSP and/ or acid and thinsetting onto that, to the way that I'd do it if it were mine: clean as mentioned, then wrap/ cover in metal mesh and set tiles with thinset on that. I've heard diff. people swear one way or the other on the adhesives vs. thinset, over a stable cementatious surface I'd go with thinset.

    1. hipaul | Mar 11, 2007 07:13pm | #3

      I've had one other person tell me about cleaning the brick well and going right over that, and I just happened to pick up my Taunton tiling book last night and flipped it right open to the part where he talks about being able to thinset right over brick and then put tile on. His comment was to actually mortar over the whole thing with a thin coat first to fill in all the joints and pockets, so that the thinset coat underneath the tile doesn't dry out unevenly due to the different thicknesses and crack.
      Putting the metal mesh over the brick would surely keep anything from cracking, a little more work but a lot more reassurance..

      1. Jointerman | Mar 11, 2007 10:38pm | #4

        It seems like coating the brick with mastic or thinset is a lot of work. When I tiled over my ugly painted brick fireplace, I covered it with cement board for a nice new tiling surface. I believe I had used tapcon screws and liquid nails to put the Wonderboard (tm) up. From there, it was easy to lay the tile.

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