My husband and I found a bargain on porcelain tile at Mardens, 99¢ a square foot. Not only was it a great deal, but the pros were starting to add up. I read reviews on how tile holds up well to water and sand. Since this home is on a lake, porcelain tile seemed like a great choice. We also had decided to install radiant floor heating on the entire first floor and tile is known to work wonderfully with that type of heat source. The one con is we had never tiled a floor before.
If you are looking for a quick floor install, this is not the project for you. However, if you are looking to install tiles to save money and/or this material suits your flooring needs, read on to learn from my experience... mistakes and all.
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| Lay some kind of cement backerboard over your subfloor to create a foundation for your tile. We used Wonderboard Lite, but there are a lot of different choices. We paid around $10 per board. |
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| Mix and spread out mortar. Make sure there is even coverage in order to have a solid base for your tiles. In this photo there are some places that needed to be filled in. This step is important in order to not have tiles crack. Screw the cement board to the subfloor using special screws. The Wonderboard had marks for where you need to use screws. Probably most brands have a similar design. |
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| The cement boards should be layed with staggered seams. |
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| Tape all of your seams. |
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| Smooth mortar over the taped seams. Try to make this layer as thin and smooth as possible to make it easier to lay your tiles evenly. |
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| We placed tiles ahead of time to see what the pattern would look like and to decide where we wanted the tiles to go. In my research, most sites said to chalk out a line at the center of the room. We did not do this because we were tiling the whole downstairs of this home. We needed to have a continuous pattern throughout the whole downstairs. |
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| At 2:00 am we set our first tiles. That was an extremely bad idea to lay our first tiles ever while we were exhausted! We had the mortar too thick and when I went to lay tiles the following day, the tiles from the previous evening were higher than all of the rest of the tiles in the room. |
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| Progress! |
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| I found it easiest to lay down mortar beyond the tile that you are placing. |
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| I layed all of the tiles that did not need to be cut first, then my husband cut all of the tiles to lay what was left. |
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| Foyer |
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| Hallway! We left places for us to walk so that we could get to the bathroom. We played tiles in the empty spots on a different day. |
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| Twenty four hours later you can clean any dried mortar from between the tiles that you may have not cleaned up when you were laying the tiles. Then you can grout your seams. |
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| Mix grout and smoosh between the cracks with a float. Then wipe away with the float. |
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| Go over the grout with a wet sponge making sure to wipe with a rinsed sponge for each small area. Refresh your water bucket often. The better you do this step, the less likely you will have a film left on your tiles. |
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| I felt proud at this point. My first ever tiled floor. |
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| One room down! |
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| In this pic you can see the variation in height from the 2:00 am tiles and the ones I placed the following day. |
