Tavy Thin-Skin #007 Glue

I purchased the Tavy Thin Skin System (glue and paper) to re-do a kitchen floor and door entry way in a rental property. I waited over a year after I installed the tile using the Tavy System to see how it held up before writing this review. So far, it is doing great - you'd never have known it wasn't installed on tile backer board. This is really more of a review of the entire system and not just the glue. The rental house was built in 1959 and is on a crawlspace. When I bought it 10 years ago, I put down a clean layer of 1/4" wood subfloor over at least one and maybe two layers of existing linoleum and then loose-laid new linoleum over that, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do long-term. Well after 10 years, the linoleum finally needed to be replaced, but the subfloor still looked great. I had always heard that you should never put ceramic tiles down on wood, but I really wanted tiles and hated to pull up a perfectly good floor. I found the Tavy system while researching if it was okay to put tiles down on wood. I watched the Tavy videos and read the reviews and decided to give it a shot. I will note here that my floor was very solid and supported, so there was no sagging or bouncing to deal with. The entire process is not exactly difficult, but it is time-consuming. You basically have to clean the subfloor really good to make sure it is free of all dirt, debris, grease, etc. I would recommend dry fitting all your Tavy Thin-Skin paper before you start applying the glue to make sure you cut it to the correct size. The great thing about the Thin Skin is that since it is paper, you can cut it in whatever shape or size you need. And there is very little waste because you can piece sections together in case you don't have the exact size you need. If only cutting the tile was as easy as cutting the Thin Skin paper! Once you’ve measured and cut your paper, then spread a thin layer of the Tavy glue down on the clean subfloor with a U-shaped trowel, working in small areas. The glue is very sticky – only put down as much as you can easily work with (I worked in sections about 3’ x 30” - the width of the Thin Skin roll). Then apply the Tavy Thin-Skin paper over the glue. Once you've covered the area to be tiled with the glue and paper and it has started to dry, you have to apply a thin layer of thin-set mortar with a straight trowel over the glue/paper to create a "concrete" base. Your arms will get a workout for sure. You do need to be a little careful when applying the glue - it is VERY sticky and does not wash out of clothing. If you get glue on any tools and don’t wash it off before it starts drying, you may not get it off. (I kept my trowel in a bucket of warm water when I wasn’t using it to keep it from drying). And don't be too generous when applying it; I started running out when I got to the last 6-8 sq ft of my project. You need enough glue to make the paper stick – but it doesn’t need to be a thick coating. I made the glue last, but just barely. And my entire project was just under 100 sq ft. Overall, I am very pleased with the Tavy system and would use it again if needed. I also used the Tavy Tile Puck (love that thing!) and the Tavy Tile Spacers (more expensive than regular spacers, but for a tile novice, they made the job easy to keep in line) and the Tavy Tile Mallet (good way to press down any minor lippage). If I notice any problems in the future, I will update the review.

This stuff works great but as others have said, it can be messy. I wore heavy duty nitrile gloves and kept a cup with mineral spirits and paper towels handy to clean as I worked. The mineral spirits easily clean the adhesive, even after is starts to set. It would be nice if the manufacturer had more detailed instructions and some tips for real world applications. I used the system to set tile directly on the subfloor of my master bath so that the finished tile floor would not be higher than the hardwood floor in the bedroom. If raising the floor was not a concern, I would have gone with backerboard as it is faster and easier to install than the Thin Skin system. All in all, this is a SOLID product and it served it's intended purpose well! I'm confident that it will last a long time.

(This is a duplicate review of the Tavy thin-skin review.) We moved into a house where most of the first floor had ceramic tile. Unfortunately the tiling job done throughout the house was extremely poor. The tile was set over 3/4 plywood and in places the grout had cracked or the tile had cracked from where the underlying floor had "moved" from the weak subflooring the tile was placed over. It was particularly bad in a small laundry room. I suspect at some point there had been a leak from the washing machine. The tile in this room would literally crunch as you walked over it and the grout was in bad shape. I knew at some point I would have to redo the flooring job over the whole first floor, but for now I Just wanted to repair the existing laundry room. I pulled up the tile from the floor quite easily but now I had a quandry, in order to keep the floor the same level as the rest of the house, I would need to firm up the sub floor with some sort of underlayment. the thinnest stuff I could find would have just raised the floor too high. There were a couple of products on the market that would have produced an underlayment that would not add a noticeable difference to the floor height. I settled on the Tavy system because it was available through Amazon and appeared to do what I would need it too. My only complaint would be that the system makes a point on the website of stating what your sub flooring should consist of. If I could get my subflooring to what was needed, I wouldn't need to use this system. I purchased the glue and the thin skin, throughly sanded the floor and cleaned up the dust. The glue was fairly messy to apply but I followed the instructions exactly and set up a way to clean my tools after the glue was apllied. The thin-skin was like a thick paper and was very easy to work with. I was able to dry cut the skin, apply the glue and smooth out any bubbles quite easily. I let the stuff dry for a few days before applying the ceramic tile (actually over a week). One thing I did notice while using this system, is that exposed glue seems to remain somewhat tacky. Even weeks later, an exposed area near a vent still showed signs of stickiness. I don't know if this is by design or not. Where the skin contacted the glue, the skin did seem to get quite hard so I didn't worry too much about it. I applied a flexible this set mortar layer over the top of the thin-skin and let it dry. I dry cut my tile and layed it out and applied the adheisve. I decided to go with a more expensive adhesive that had a little give in it since I knew my subflorring was not as good as I wanted it to be. I used FlexBond Gray 50 lb. Fortified Thin-Set Mortar from Home Depot. I applied the tile and adhesive as I normally did. The surface was easy to work with. I used a 3/8 notch trowel and made sure the surface was level and low enough to not make a noticeable difference from the existing tile still in place from a connectiing other room. The whole tiling process from here was pretty normal from here on out. I completed the grouting and everything looked great. There was no noticeable difference in tile height from the existing room which I did not touch to the laundry room which had the tile replaced. In fact it looked like it had always been there from the beginning. It has been over six months since I did this project and the floor is holding up nicely. We moved in the washer and dryer and the room gets a lot of traffic since my garage is also connected to it. There is no noticeable give to the floor and the crunch of the old tile is gone. I don't know how long this repair will last but for now I'm quite happy with this system. It did what I needed it to do and was fairly easy to work with. My only worry going forward is how hard it will be to remove once I'm able to replace the flooring on the whole first floor. I'm not looking at doing that project anytime soon but when I do, I will try to update this review.