Learn how to tile

With satisfying results I cannot consider this goal completed as there is so much more to learn but as with my other projects I have taken on, I now have a greater appreciation for the people that do this for a living. Spending a day on your hands and knees bent over laying thinset mortar, placing the tiles and getting them aligned and spaced properly then coming back and grouting the whole thing. It’s quite a chore! Today I laid the marble tile on a counter top I am building for this DIY project of building a wet bar. The tiles are not quite as level as I would like but that is in the learning curve for this project and why we used the back area of the house to experiment on and try new things. If it all goes bad, it’s just a hallway to the garage and the bathroom. Of which, the back room in this area I tiled is our downstairs half bath. New toilet plus a sink and vanity combo which is more like a pedestal sink the way it is built have been installed. I do recommend the taller style toilets. It gives you a higher throne to survey over the subjects with. ;-)

Schleuter-rific. After finishing the plumbing, closing back up the drywall and then texturing, priming and painting all the walls that could drip on the tile we laid the substrate mat made by Schleuter using their Ditra poly base. We chose this instead of using the cement backer board because of it’s lower profile it is a closer match to the height of the laminate flooring in the rest of the house.

The info I got from both the manufacturer and other sites I researched online had lots of positives about this stuff and I figured that I would give it a shot. We cut the whole thing and dry fit it which is this picture before laying down a 50lb bag of modified thinset with an additional adhesive additive to help ensure a good bond between the wood flooring and the fleece side of the Ditra poly substrate. Then after running the float over it and working out all of the wrinkles and the high spots in the thinset we let it set up over night so I could have a day to cut all of the tiles for the corners, edges and every other transition that needed to be cut. The instructions say you don’t need to let the underlayment of thinset to dry you can just work it in and tile the whole thing and let it all cure at once. It was just getting too late for me to work on it. After spending the next day cutting and fitting I pulled up all of the tiles and mixed up a batch of regular thinset mortar and started laying tile. After a long day of tile work I finished cleaning up the tools by a little after 9:30 at night and called it a day. 2 days later all of the mortar should be nice and dry. We went out and got a bag of grout and tonight and tomorrow since there is an off day for the Red Sox and the Angels in the playoff games we’ll spread and press in the grout and finish that part then seal the whole darn thing. I’ll snap and post a picture when that is done. Then I can install all of the new fixtures in the downstairs bathroom at the end of the hall. The new toilet will be nice. You never know how much you miss the ones you love until they are gone! ;-)

Our entire 1st floor is covered in laminate flooring and we decided that the flooring in our back entry / hallway was looking a little rough since it’s not really meant to have wet traffic across it unless the extra work was done to properly seal it and it doesn’t look like that was done so we thought, hey lets tile it. (Nice run on sentence eh?) The area flows into the downstairs half bath witch is more like a one-third bath since it’s the size of a closet with a seat and a sink and not much room for much. While we’re at it we’re going to gut that bathroom and install a new higher sitting toilet and a pedestal sink replacing the vanity and sink to make a little more room. The original layout of the rear hallway and entry was that the washer and dryer were in the area and a previous owner moved them to the other side of the wall into the garage and freed up the space for a counter top and cabinet. The change worked very well but since we had to rip out the laminate floor that was under the cabinets, we are replacing the utilitarian white laminate cabinets with nicer wood finished cabinets and are going to do a natural stone tile counter top. Originally I wanted to use granite tiles but found a smoking deal on some real cool looking marble tiles for under half the price on a clearance.

I’ve never tiled before and like many of the other projects I’ve been doing in my house it’s a learning on the job process. I’m going to invest into a bridge tile saw so I have the capability to cut both the ceramic tiles we got for the floor and the heavier marble tiles for the counter top.

We seem to try things out in the back room to see how it works out, first room for a new hard wood stained 6 panel door, first room for crown molding, now the first room for tile. If this tiling project works out with some level of success we may continue the tile on into the kitchen and then do the smaller front entry. If the countertop works out the I’ll look into doing counter tops in the kitchen. In there I’ll use granite for the tops if I do it for heat and sanitary reasons. If it all goes bad I’ll have a used tile saw for sale. Also while I’m doing the counter and flooring in the back area, I’m changing the counter from being just that, a counter into a wet bar. I’m going to tap into the lines from the washer and dryer to plumb in a sink and I’ve purchased a keggerator that I have changed from a single 15 gallon keg to a twin 6 gallon Cornelius keg operation so I can have more than one flavor on tap. I did some looking and a properly setup keggerator will keep the beer good for between 45 and 60 days from tapping so no pressure to be an alcoholic plus with the growlers I’ve gotten from local producers I can take to go’s with me when visiting friends.

Here we go again…………..

After I paint the house….this’ll be my next project…hopefully I can figure it out :)

This seems like a dumb thing to want to do, but I would like to learn how. I own a 45 year old house that needs repairs. The kitchen and baths are in real bad shape. I enjoy doing the fix up, but tiling is something that I have never done. I would hate to wreck the place.

My husband and I have tiled our downstairs floor three times in less than 20 years. We started off with paver tiles, but they required too much maintenance using both strippers and sealers. That tile wasn’t practical when we had young active dogs. Our next choice was a simple commercial tile, but the look became outdated and as our dogs got older, they had problems walking on the tile. We currently have a wood look tile that we installed in a diagonal herringbone pattern and think we will keep it a while.

Having the right tools makes the job a lot easier and saves a lot of time. In addition to the normal tiling supplies, we used an air chisel to remove the old tile, a mixing blade to help mix the thinset and a wet saw to cut all the tile. We purchased our tile from a tile warehouse that was open to the public and they provided excellent customer service whenever we had questions about installing the tile. The grout purchased from the tile store is a much better quality than what most home improvement stores sell and a wider variety of available colors.

The hardest part of tiling for me was making sure the tile was installed evenly. Walls and floors are seldom even, so it’s important to mark center points, use spacers and check to make sure it’s level several times before the thinset dries.