# Forum Home Renovation Stairs, Steps and Ramps  New Balustrade and Tiling. Which comes first?

## frozensage

I am replacing the existing front porch with new tiles and new wire balustrade to finish the look. In my head I thought tiles would go in first and then the balustrade posts can just be screwed onto the tiles. A couple of the stair/balustrade companies I called up insists they do the posts on the concrete subfloor first then tile around it as to avoid cracking. Cracking sure, but I feel they just wanna make their life easier when having tiling done first would surely give me a better finish instead of having to cut the tile up? How do you guys normally do this?

----------


## Pulse

grout the posts into core drilled holes in concrete then tile around, much better finish, much more stable too  
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

----------


## NRB

As Pulse says core drilled holes and grouted in posts is the way to go 
Bolting through tiles into the base concrete will almost always crack the tiles
This is how the good tradies do it
There are collars you can get that fit around the posts to cover the tiles to give a neat finish

----------


## frozensage

so finish the balustrading first completely, then tile around the posts? Or just the posts, then tile, then finish the rest of the balustrade?

----------


## NRB

I would get the posts in then tile,this will give you plenty of room to work.

----------


## frozensage

> I would get the posts in then tile,this will give you plenty of room to work.

  hmmm.... so whoever doing the balustrading will need to come twice then?

----------


## Petervm

> so finish the balustrading first completely, then tile around the posts? Or just the posts, then tile, then finish the rest of the balustrade?

   Technically there is no reason why the balustrading company can't core drill through the tiles into the concrete, the problem I've had over the years is that the balustrading guys don't always take care when drilling through the tiles and chip the tiles so badly that the post cover plate does not cover the chips, sometimes they get a dozen holes right and then one wrong, saves a lot of cutting if you can trust them to drill the hole right.
Which ever way you go it's very important that the tile has at least a 5mm (10mm is better) clearance around the post, to the full depth of the tile, to allow for movement, i.e no glue, grout or post anchor grout between the tile and post.

----------


## NRB

OK I assumed wrongly that you were doing it yourself,sorry about that.
My job was tiled,they then core drilled through the tiles and grouted in and came back the next day to fix top rail followed by the wire,all up my job took about four days
The reason they left it to the next day was to make sure that the grout had cured

----------


## frozensage

> OK I assumed wrongly that you were doing it yourself,sorry about that.
> My job was tiled,they then core drilled through the tiles and grouted in and came back the next day to fix top rail followed by the wire,all up my job took about four days
> The reason they left it to the next day was to make sure that the grout had cured

  And you didn't have any problems of the tile cracking when they installed the posts? 
When you say grouted in do you mean just standard grout or actually caulk?  
I see you are in melbourne as well, are you able to recommend any installers for balustrades? I got about 12m worth around the edge of the patio + the stairs leading down.  
Thanks heaps!

----------


## NRB

No problems with cracking 
The grout was a special for this purpose,some grout shrinks,this stuff doesn't 
Our job was done by a guy from Phillip Island

----------

