Dot & Dab Tiles in bathroom

Imo the tile should always be fully buttered. I assume it's a wall and not a floor?

 

The one from 70s we had ripped out was dot n dabbed.... Was still a birch to get off the walls and left a lot of patching to be done... So it held up well along with the grout. Bloody awful tiles, grapes and fruit on, and an 'always dirty' pattern presumably to hide the dirt

As a consequence I largely ended up redoing it that way myself too as the walls were shot to shirt... and the cheap guy I paid to plumb and install said it was ok to tile over n build the wall back up with massive dobs of tile adhesive... Now I know better but they're holding up... where the walls were repaired properly by me after that and flat, I tiled in the usual grooved way... Because I could...

So maybe old tiles off left walls a bit shabby and so dot and dab was the quick way to 'retile...

 

Make sure there's a full bed of adhesive under your floor tiles when he comes to do it, any unsupported part of the tile will crack.

 

Don't panic dot and dab is fine on walls, it helps to give you nice straight lines and even out the extg uneven walls, you only need 60% of the tiles to be covered but you do need a 100% coverage on the floor

 

I removed some ceramic tiles in a bathroom once that were dot and dabbed. Started at one end of the room with my trusty old wood chisel and walked along steadily giving one tap per tile...tap, clonk, tap, clonk,tap,clonk!!

Was a bit like being in a computer game