Ceramic Tile How To - Project Tips

Ceramic tile how to information can save you much money and trouble. Learning tile laying shortcuts and tricks is important whether you're a do-it-yourselfer or a professional. Planning your project is the first step to a successful job. What will it take to do this job? Once you have the tools and supplies, then you can lay out the job and begin the installation.

Estimating A Ceramic Tile Installation

You'll need to know the area to be covered to determine how many pieces of tile you need. Get about 10 percent extra to allow for breakage and trim. Knowing the area, you can also buy the correct amount of adhesives. Also note the feet of trim for edges like counter tops and walls.

Depending on the project, you may need other supplies. Tile spacers are used to separate tiles and keep gaps between tiles consistent. Backing material for the tile is often required. Hardi-Backer board is the preferred backer for many pros. This is a rigid cement board not damaged by water.

Gathering Your Tools

Tools will vary with the job but you'll need some standard tools. Standard tools include:

• Plastic 5 gallon buckets
• Tile saw
• Nippers
• Cutter board
• Hammer
• Screwdriver
• Notched trowel
• Margin trowel
• Chalk line
• Pencil
• Tri square
• Spacers
• Tape measure
• Level
• Tile sponge

For many jobs you can do trimming just with tile nippers, but a cutter board is better and a saw is better still. A cutter board scores the tile so it breaks easily. A tile saw is a circular saw that cuts with water lubrication at the cut.

Laying Out A Job

Once you have your tools and materials, lay out the job using your square, measure and chalk line. You'll want to strike lines as guide lines. For ceramic tile floor installation, you can move to the center of the room to start or start along a wall. Remember that no room is perfectly square. If you will trim tiles along a wall, where would those cut tiles look best? The last thing you want is to have the most visible wall have tile running along it at an angle.

Lay out a ceramic tile wall the same way. Determine where to make cuts. Do you want to make cuts at the bottom of the wall, at the top, or at both bottom and top? For example, on a tub surround the tub is usually installed at an angle. If you start whole tiles running along the tub, your tile will be running at an angle and will look really strange. So measure carefully and plan ahead.

Ceramic Tile How To Installation

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 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 up out of the space between the tiles.

Keep the space between tiles consistent by visual alignment or use spacers to keep the spacing just right. Regular tile spacers come in several widths to produce different spacing. Typical spacings for floor tile are 3/16 inch and 1/4 inch.

After the tile is set in place and the thinset is dried, the spaces between tiles are filled with grout. Grout is applied with a rubber trowel flush with the surface of the tile. The grout is then cleaned from the surface of the tile before it cures with a special tile sponge. After clean up and installation of trim, the job is complete.

Those are the basic ceramic tile installation steps. There are tricks to special projects like the ceramic tile shower and ceramic tile backsplash, but the basic steps are the same.

Puzzled about a ceramic tile project? We invite you to visit Installing Ceramic Tile for answers to your ceramic tile installation questions.

Besides lots of articles on our site, you can also read free reviews about a unique ceramic tile how to video series where you can watch a ceramic tile installation that's probably just like yours. This is like having an experienced tile guy show you the answer to every question you have.

Al Bullington is an experienced handyman who really likes ceramic tile.