Tiling round windows?

Mar 04, 2004 6 Replies

Hello



I'm about to start tiling an ensuite shower-room floor to ceiling. There is a rebated window that I'll have to deal with. The tiles are quite expensive but have unglazed edges - I gather this is fairly standard these days.



As far as I can see the only way to deal with the external corners around the window is to use plastic tile beading. I guess I'm going to have to very carefully mitre the corners to achieve a professional finish.



Does anyone have any tips or alternative suggestions?



Des


Could you not lay the tiles so that the lower side edges just touch each other and then put a bead of grout along the join and level off to 45 degrees so that it is flush with the top edges?

Crappy attempt at ascii art follows :)

T = Tile, 1 horizontal and 1 vertical shown G = Grout bead

G TTTTTTTTTT G T G TTTTTTTTT TTTT T T T T T T

In message , Jim writes

Hmm, not sure I think that would look that good.

Pro tilers (from what I've seen in my parents and In-laws bathrooms, usually go for the corner 'beading' route. And I think it looks fine.

When I did it I went the mitring route. I was using one of the electric tile saws and this makes cutting mitred edges relatively easy. As all things take your time and you can get a good job. But of course it adds greatly to the time, and would add inordinately to the cost if paying for the job.

I went further and 'framed' my window opening. I was using 3 different coloured tiles and used one to cut rectangular tile pieces used to make a frame around the window opening. It looks really good.

Of course all this fiddling took ages, compared to the rest of the tiling, but I'm still impressed with he job when I have a shower :-)

You can get 'chrome' beading (at a price) which would match the shower fittings?

I've used plastic beading, and the mitreing is a pain where you're trying to join three pieces at the top corner. Think carefully about the angles.

I've done the grout across the corner as well, and it's difficult to get the width to be the same as the other grout gaps. Couldn't use the beading as tiles were mosaic tiles and v.thin.

How about some of those quadrant tiles they use for 'round a bath? If they had the right colour you might be able to use them vertically. Corners'd be a pain though!

HTH, Al

But if you're doing the job yourself the "class" shows through

Richard

Hello Des

Yep, has been for a while. Some brands of tiles come with a few that have one or two glazed ends but even then it looks a bit icky.

The plastic stuff looks "ick", imo, and concerns me that it'll look even more "ick" after a few years. I've just used gilt metal which was much more expensive, but certainly doesn't look "ick". :)

The mitreing isn't as bad as you may think. If you leave a mm or two gap on the corners (with mitres) and grout it, it looks good but doesn't require exact mitring.

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