Screed, tiles, wood: what it really takes, step by step.
Times and budgets are indicative, for a confident DIYer, surprises excluded.
A floor is the surface you see and the substrate you do not. In an older flat in Nice, under the carpet or the 1970s tiles, you find a tired screed, two or three centimetres of level difference from one room to the next, sometimes terracotta tiles bonded onto plaster. Laying the covering takes three days. Everything else is the substrate.
The order cannot be caught up later: floors come after the chases, the partitions and the ceilings. And every stage brings its own wait. A levelling compound can be covered after 24 to 48 hours; a traditional screed needs several weeks, in the order of a week per centimetre.
Then there is the logistics: 60 m² of tiles weigh more than a tonne, delivered to the pavement outside the building. The rubble goes back down the same staircase. In a copropriété (co-owned building), warn the neighbours and read what the rules say about floor coverings: many require the original acoustic performance to be kept.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
Before the showroom, the copropriété rules. They often say the original floor may not be replaced by a covering with less acoustic insulation. Carpet swapped for tiles with no acoustic underlay is the classic dispute between floors.
What goes wrong — The tiles are laid, the neighbour below complains, and what is demanded is that the whole floor comes up.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
Measure every room, add 10 % for offcuts, 15 % for a diagonal layout. Order it all at once, from the same batch. Check the delivery lead time: it drives the programme. And work out where you are going to store a tonne of tiles.
What goes wrong — You are 4 m² short at the end. The top-up batch arrives in a different shade, and the difference shows.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
In a building whose permis de construire (building permit) predates July 1997, asbestos can hide in tile adhesives, vinyl floor tiles and certain renders. The survey before works is compulsory as soon as a company is involved — and it is the only way to know what you are about to turn into dust.
What goes wrong — Breaking first and asking afterwards. The fibres are in the home, and the decontamination costs more than the floor.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
The home is emptied completely, doors and skirtings included. Tape up the rooms you are sparing, cover the hall and the lift if the rubble goes that way. Decide now where the waste goes: a skip on the public highway needs a permit to occupy public space from the mairie (town hall).
Estimated time 1 – 3 days
The most physical and the noisiest stage. Tiles bedded in mortar come up with a light breaker; bonded tiles take pieces of the screed with them. Reckon on double the time for old bedded tiling — and on noise the neighbours will hear every single day.
What goes wrong — Lifting the tiles tears the screed off down to the structural floor. A new bed has to be formed, so weeks more drying.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
Three things to check: flatness, with a 2 m straight edge; soundness, by tapping the floor with a hammer, because anything that rings hollow will come loose; and moisture, which blisters a wood floor and lets an adhesive go. On a timber floor, also check that nothing moves underfoot.
What goes wrong — Laying over a hollow substrate. Six months later the tiles come loose one by one, and there are no spares left.
Estimated time 1 – 2 days
Under a centimetre of correction, a self-levelling compound will do: primer compulsory, precise mixing, the whole room poured in one go. Beyond that you need a screed — and a traditional screed dries slowly. Those weeks cannot be compressed.
What goes wrong — Levelling compound mixed too wet, or laid with no primer. It cracks as it dries, and the only cure is to hack the whole lot off.
Estimated time 2 – 4 days
The set-out decides everything: find the starting point that avoids thin cuts where they will be seen, snap the lines, dry-lay a row. Only then the adhesive, a square metre at a time, back-buttered for large formats, with levelling clips and a perimeter joint at the walls.
What goes wrong — A large format laid without back-buttering sounds hollow and breaks at the first impact, in the middle of the living room.
Estimated time 1 – 2 days
The time goes into the details: around door frames, pipe penetrations, corners that are never at 90°, thresholds between two thicknesses. Every angled cut is measured on the spot and often made twice. This is where the spare tiles disappear.
What goes wrong — One botched cut at the end of the job, and there are no longer enough tiles from the right batch to redo it.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
Wait at least 24 hours before grouting. The grout is worked in diagonally with a float, pressed home, then sponged off just before it hardens. Too early and it sinks; too late and it leaves a white haze across the whole room.
What goes wrong — The haze dries on matt tiles. Acid cleaner, several passes, and a shade that stays uneven.
Estimated time 1 – 2 days
The boards acclimatise flat in the room for 48 hours. Underlay rolled out, boards running towards the light, end joints staggered by at least 30 cm, and above all an 8 to 10 mm gap against every wall and every obstacle. That gap hides behind the skirting; it is not optional.
What goes wrong — The perimeter gap is forgotten along one wall. At the first humid summer, the floor lifts in a wave.
Estimated time 1 – 2 days
Mitred skirtings, threshold strips, sealant in the sensitive corners, then cleaning: cutting dust keeps settling for days. Wait before bringing the heavy furniture back. And keep ten spare tiles in the cellar; they will be worth gold in five years.
Range excl. VAT — VAT varies with the type of work
Indicative range, not contractually binding.
This estimate is not a quote: the final price is set with you, after a site visit.
Count on 8 to 15 days of actual work, plus the drying: 24 to 48 hours after a levelling compound, several weeks after a screed. In practice the job spreads over three to six weeks if you work evenings and weekends.
Yes, if the old ones are perfectly bonded, flat and clean, and if you accept losing one to two centimetres of height — which moves thresholds and means trimming doors. Every hollow tile has to come up first.
The floor is a private part, but many sets of rules require the original acoustic insulation to be kept. Read them before you buy and lay a suitable underlay: it is the most frequent dispute between neighbours on different floors.
Services, partitions, skimming and the first coat of paint all come before the floor. The covering follows, then the skirtings, and the final coat as the finish. Laying the floor too early means protecting it — and then repairing it — for the rest of the job.
A self-levelling compound can be walked on within hours and covered in 24 to 48 hours depending on thickness and humidity. In winter, or in a closed-up home, allow longer: laying over a damp levelling compound means a debonding that nothing puts right.
Breaking things is quick. What costs is everything around it.
12 steps · 5 – 12 days
The result is decided before the paint. Twelve steps to see where.
12 steps · 16 – 32 days
Thirteen stages, ten trades, and an order you do not get to change.
13 steps · 49 – 102 days
