Hey Gang... I started working on what I thought was going to be a very easy job that has left me scratching my head. I'm hoping on some advice. I'm handy but I am no carpenter by any means.

OK, I'm currently finishing half of my basement. In the utility room I left the original concrete slab. The other side I'm finishing I had dry-packed, over which I put down 12x24" rectified edge porcelain ...tile over a Ditra heat system. It turned out great.

I was left with a finished tile floor that's 1" higher than the original slab at two doorways. My plan was to build a simple wood transition ramp from a 1x8 that I could finish and fasten to the slab with PL.... This room is functional and doesn't need to look pretty.

I ran the board through a planer until I got nice clean 1" x 7-1/2" (true size boards)

Having used sleds before... Since this is a one off job... in this case I fastened a 1x2 under and along one side of the board. I believed that I could run this through the planer and I would be able to shave off material until I was left with a nice tapered transition. What I experienced instead was that the planer forced down the higher side of the board, flattening it out and fighting against the taper.

I've seen many a tapered transition out there and figured this was the way to do it. I'm hoping someone might be able to provide me with a straightforward way to achieve what I thought would be a simple taper....

Maybe I need to ditch the planer and approach this in a different way altogether?

Or perhaps I'm missing something altogether? I've done a lot of big reno's... One thing I. know for sure is that there's a lot I don't know

Here are a few pics of what I'm dealing with.

Thanks all.


Here is the transition



I fastened 1" x 1/8" flat bar steel against the face of the transition to protect the tile from chipping



Fail

 

I've been pondering this and think I may be on to what happened... Hopefully I'm allowed to post this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgPZnM6SBLs

Although my board was not twisted, I created a sled/jig much like this one... The glue and all. The one difference is that the base plywood was the same width as the board I was trying to taper. With the one in the video the base is wider.

Think that was the issue? Could that have kept the whole works from rotating?

 

You are trying to make it too wide, and trying to taper it down to a point, which is not reasonable. A single wide board will warp really bad... And 1" is more than anyone would typically ever have to transition.

If I was doing it, I would likely start with a couple oak 1x4 or 1x6 that have been planed to be 1/2" thick. You can often buy them that thick... but if you can't you can always rip them down to 1/2" on a table saw. Then I would rip them to width on a table saw so that that I have 3 pieces maybe 2" or 2 1/2" wide.

The first one is simply flat.... 1/2 x 2 or 2 1/2 and gets glued or screwed to the concrete.

The other 2 would be cut on a table saw at an angle... 1/2" on the thick side... maybe 3/16" on the thin side. Then belt sand them smooth and round the thin edge by hand.

Fasten an angled piece on top of the flat one... and fasten the second angled piece to the concrete floor in front of the flat one.

And tile should typically end directly underneath (centered below) a closed door. I know you don't have a door there yet but your tile runs out too far to ever do that in the future.

 

Thank you XSleeper. I know the rule about the tile terminating under the door but I decided that since aesthetics only matter from the finished room, I would run it slightly further into the unfinished utility room. This way ensuring it could not be seen from the finished room even if I'm lying on the basement floor (lets hope that never happens) . But yes, it was a conscious decision.....

If I understand what you're saying I need to make the transition components in pieces? Forgive my ignorance... What changes in when moving to planing more narrow pieces? I'm not sure how that makes them easier to plane on the taper?

 

You aren't planing anything... I didn't use the word planer... its all done on the table saw. Narrow pieces are more stable, less likely to warp and cup, which is what wood does, especially when it gets thin.

 

Oh! I get it... So a vertical rip on a more narrow piece of wood.... OK. I can try that... And I feel more comfortable on the table saw.

I wonder how wide 1/2" board I can rip on my 10" table saw... Hmmmm... Maybe see how wide a piece I can get out of a 2x6 with the blade right up?

 

So a 1" high ending is a toe jamb, instead of wood, just put down a bed of mortar and using a tile angle it so one end is sitting on the concrete and the other is flush with the top of the tile!

 

I’ve never seen that done. I would think the leading tile would be quite prone to chipping given it’s laying on top of the slab

 

The tile is not going to chip any more in this application that anywhere else, your just providing a "ramp" from the floor to the elevated tile.

Assuming the time is 1/4" thick, that doesn't present a toe jamb issue, your just trying to provide some transition to the 1" high level!

Plus, a tile transition probable looks a little bit different/better than a slab of wood!