Tiling advice (floor and walls) - lots of questions

[David Robinson]

I'm going to tile my bathroom and en suite. This will be my first attempt at tiling. Any advice? ;-)

The plan is to make the floorboards as secure as possible, put "no more ply" down on the floor, and tile on top of that.

The walls are mostly newly plastered.

I'm looking at getting a reasonable electric tile cutter, so I can do straight cuts and L-shapes around the window (also, later, L-shapes around the sockets in the kitchen). I can't find the previous suggested models any more - any current suggestions?

I'm planning to use silicone at the corners and around the bath (leaving the bath full of water before+after doing this). How big a gap should I leave at the internal corners of the room for silicone + movement?

Can I use the same flexible adhesive and grouting for the floor and walls? Any particular brands good but not-too-expensive? Or better to use cheaper for walls than floor?

Some people seem to leave tile spacers in behind grouting, others seem to take them out before grouting - does it matter? What's best?

What's the best order to do this - walls first, or floor? I was planning to start near the bottom and work up, but found one on-line guide that suggested starting in the middle - sounds strange to me. I'm going to tile after the bath has gone in, but before the basin+WC. Do you do a whole row at a time, or a row on one wall at a time, that whole wall, and then start on another one?

Anything else I should watch out for?

Many thanks in advance. My house is already far better than it would otherwise be thanks to help from this group!

Cheers, David.

[F]

I used ~60 boxes of tiles and used a £30 cheapo from Focus to do the cuts without any problems.

[NT]

no more ply?

Theres a wiki page on them fwiw

I'm planning to use silicone at the corners and around the bath

stay away from cheap stuff in a bathroom. If you need to cut costs, you can use cement on the walls.

not too much, but best dont stuff them in there to begin with. Tiles tend not to be perfectly identically dimensioned, so you need to allow for some degree of variability in the gaps. Poke spacers in from the front, and pull out once set.

Tile layouts look best when symmetrical.

I'd fill a wall before moving on, but I'm not a expert tiler!

Floor flexing. Tiles really need a rigid base, and flexible adhesive on wood floors

NT

[Cicero]

==============================================================================

An electric cutter with a water bath can be very messy so try to do your cutting outside if you want to avoid the cleaning.

Finishing a cut cleanly can be a bit difficult; there's a tendency to break just before the end of the cut so do a few test cuts before the real thing to make sure you've got the knack.

Cic.

[Tim Watts]

Tim Watts wibbled on Friday 16 July 2010 19:28

timings you can expect - eg sponge grout after 20 minutes, or floor adhesive has a pot life of 20 minutes or 2 hours (I've used both - Kerabond was fine and a bucket load would last for ages. Keraquik however was a bastard - mix bucket, use bucket as fast as possible before it sets. Mind you, you could walk on the tiles in about an hour.

[F]

And try to avoid February inside a garage with the door wide open...

[Dave Liquorice]

Hopefully the bath would have been fitted level, so the batten can be fixed tile height + grout line + tile to bath space above the top of the bath. Tile the wall, remove batten fit row of full tiles in gap. No uglyness with part cut tiles. Along the floor line may well be different, is there to be a skirting? If there is scribe the lower edge of that to the floor such the the top of the skirting is straight and level.

Getting the first row straight and level is crucial, trouble is with most rooms if you have each individual wall level it's almost certainly guranteed that the horizontal grount lines won't match when you complete around the room. A rotating laser level and making the horizontals work with fittings (the bath, windows etc) means that the horizontal grout lines will match around the room even if they aren't exactly level on a given wall. One has to be sensible though, a lot is down to careful planning and thought before you start marking out and definaitely before you take adhesive to wall.

Remember you can make grout lines slightly larger or smaller over several joins to make things line up perfectly or better. Again don't go mad and don't suddenly change the grout width.

[rbel]

I chose May/June outside wearing oilskins!

I used a Wickes badged (wet bath) electric cutter when we tiled our =

kitchen walls and floor. I started off with the blade that came with th= e =

machine but soon realised that it was not up to handling the exceptional= ly =

hard porcelain floor tiles we had chosen - =A335 investment in a Macrist= =

blade solved the problem and was well worth it. From memory we damaged = =

just one tile due to cracking/chipping and that was during the removal o= f =

a sliver of one edge. I became reasonably adept, even cutting square an= d =

oblong holes in the centre of tiles to receive sockets and switches.

[Jim K]

LOL;>) I found an apron of bubble wrap and parcel tape did the biz for me - very grim otherwise after 10mins....

Cheers Jim K

[Dave Liquorice]

Bung it in the corner rather than the window.

And expensive being porcelain no doubt. Hope the walls are really flat and you get the adhesive on evenly. I can envisage it being rather to easy to push just a bit too hard on one end and... crack. B-(

What looks good, with big tiles and contrasting grout the grout also becomes a feature so can be larger say up to 5mm with those big tiles.

If it's likely to be possible with the sizes of the tiles in question then yes. The kitchen has a band of 100mm glass tiles with strips

150mm long below, the main tiles being 150mm. This means that the grout lines will line up at a repeat so I have arranged them so they do:

jtttttttttttttttjtttttttttttttttj jggggggggggjggggggggggjgggggggggj sssssssssssssssjssssssssssssssjsssssssssssssss jtttttttttttttttjtttttttttttttttj

j - joint g - glass tile t - main tile s - strip

If you have 330 and 150 you are a bit stuffed, I think the coincidence repeat will be every 11th large tile? 330/(330-(150*2)) or every 3.63 metres (not including grout...). I might try and make an alignment or symmetrical mismatch where you eye is attracted to at the junction between the two tiles but even that would depend on what knock on effects doing so would have.

[David Robinson]

Not really, =A315/m2 from Focus DIY. Makes me wonder if the packet is lying!

I've tried the "does water soak in" test and the "does striking it with a metal object mark it spark" test. Water doesn't soak in, but the metal object doesn't spark either. For the sake of them not falling off the wall, I'll believe the packaging, unless something proves otherwise.

Cheers, David.

[Dave Liquorice]

What was the metal? Brass won't spark for instance... Not really sure what would be a conclusive metal to use iron/steel but probably not stainless steel.

[Dave Liquorice]

Small gap, when you apply the silicone ensure it fills that gap. If nothing else it allows for movement without putting strain on anything. I think you're already aware to fill the bath with water when doing the edges around that and leave it full until the silcone has cured.

[David Robinson]

e ply" down on the floor, and tile on top of that.

Hardibacker.

Found it here...

other places. Anyone used them? They don't list a postal address under their contact details, which always makes me suspicious.

Cheers, David.

[Tim Watts]

David Robinson wibbled on Sunday 18 July 2010 22:47

You might want to type it up into a summary document :)

And do vet it - one of us (me included) might be talking doobries, so do give more weight to things where more than one person agrees :)

Gap - absolutely. About 4mm. A bead on the surface is apt to fall off. A bead in a gap can suffer quite a lot of damage before it fails to do its job

- particularly around baths.

[David Robinson]

:) Wisdom of crowds! Or something. I've been lurking and searching uk.d-i-y for quite a few years - so I know to discount the advice from certain people who, AFAICT, only do DIY in their own imaginations, but are more than happy to offer advice! (Not referring to anyone who contributed to this thread).

Cheers, David.