Ceramic Tiles: Practical Tips for Projects
Ceramic tile information can save you a lot of money and trouble. Learning tile laying shortcuts and tricks is important whether you’re a DIYer or a pro. Planning your project is the first step to successful work. What is needed to do this job? Once you have the tools and supplies, you can design the job and start the installation.
Estimating a Ceramic Tile Installation
You will need to know the area to be covered to determine how many mosaic pieces you need. Get about an extra 10 percent to allow for breakage and trimming. Knowing the area, you can also buy the right amount of stickers. Also consider trim feet for trim such as countertops and walls.
Depending on the project, you may need other supplies. Tile spacers are used to space tiles apart and keep the spaces between tiles consistent. Tile backing material is often required. Hardi-Backer board is the backing of choice for many professionals. This is a rigid cement board that is not damaged by water.
Gather your tools
Tools will vary depending on the job, but you will need some standard tools. Standard tools include:
- 5 gallon plastic buckets
- tile saw
- Tweezers
- cutting board
- hammer
- screwdriver
- notched trowel
- margin trowel
- chalk line
- Pencil
- trisquare
- spacers
- measuring tape
- Level
- tile sponge
For many jobs, you can trim with just tile nippers, but a cutting board is better, and a saw is even better. A cutting board scores the tile for easy breakage. A tile saw is a circular saw that cuts with water lubrication in the cut.
Design a job
Once you have your tools and materials, lay out the job using your square, measurement, and chalk line. You will want to mark lines as guide lines. For tile installation, you can move to the center of the room to start or start along one wall. Remember that no room is perfectly square. If you are going to cut tiles along a wall, where would those cut tiles look best? The last thing you want is for the most visible wall to have tile along it at an angle.
Lay out a ceramic tile wall the same way. Determine where to make the cuts. Do you want to make cuts at the bottom of the wall, at the top, or at the bottom and top? For example, in a bathtub surround, the bathtub is usually installed at an angle. If you start laying whole tiles the length of the tub, your tile will run at an angle and look really weird. So measure carefully and plan ahead.
Ceramic tile How to install
The tile requires an adhesive to stick it in place. You can get pre-mixed adhesive or mix it yourself. Standard adhesive comes in powder form and is called a thinset. Thinset is spread with a notched trowel. You want just enough thinset to completely cover the bottom surface of the tile, but not so much that it oozes through the space between the tiles.
Keep the spacing between tiles consistent by visually aligning or use spacers to keep the spacing just right. Regular tile spacers come in various widths to produce different gaps. Typical gaps for floor tiles are 3/16-inch and 1/4-inch.
After laying the tile in place and drying the thin layer, the spaces between the tiles are filled with grout. The grout is applied with a rubber trowel flush with the tile surface. The grout is then cleaned from the tile surface before it cures with a special tile sponge. After cleaning and installing the trim, the job is complete.
Those are the basic steps for ceramic tile installation. There are tricks for special projects like ceramic tile shower and ceramic tile backsplash, but the basic steps are the same.
