White Marble Living Room Floor in East Sacramento
About this project
This living room floor was installed in a 1938 Tudor revival home in the Fabulous Forties area of East Sacramento. The original hardwood floor was showing significant wear and the homeowner chose to replace it with a large-format polished porcelain that reads contemporary while working with the formal proportions of the room.
Tudor revival homes in this era were framed with larger lumber than modern construction, which helps with subfloor stiffness, but the joist span in this room still required a layer of cement board over the existing subfloor to meet deflection requirements for large-format tile. We used a decoupling membrane on top of the cement board — an uncoupling layer that allows minor independent movement between the substrate and the tile, which is particularly important in wood-frame homes where seasonal movement is normal. The polished white 24x24 rectified porcelain is set with tight 1/8-inch joints and white thinset to keep the look clean.
What we did
1
Remove hardwood flooring, assess joist span and deflection
2
Install cement board and uncoupling membrane over existing subfloor
3
Set 24x24 polished white porcelain with white unmodified thinset at 1/8" joints
4
Grout, haze-clean polished surface, seal grout joints
