Tile Weekend
The weather has finally shaped up around here, it's made it up to 60 today. The forecast for the weekend is still sunny and 60's, so we are going to hit the tiling in the bathroom this weekend. Finally, it will be warm enough INSIDE our house to tile. No, I'm not joking, it has been so cold inside our house lately that the thin-set cannot be applied. We painted the bathroom ceiling one day anyways, even though the paint can suggested a minimum room temperature, and we found out there is a reason why you should follow directions. We now have cracked paint on the ceiling. Oh well, lesson learned, at least it was just paint. So, for those of you with wall tile experience, do you have any helpful suggestions? You know, the kinds of things you figure out after you've spent hours working on the project? We learned with the floor tiles that the less perfect the little design made by the trowel in the thin-set is, the less thin-set seaps between the tile. And the faster it dries! So, any helpful tips like that would be much appreciated!
A few questions:
A few questions:
- How do you keep the tiles from slipping down on the wall, do you tape them? I know you use spacers for placement, but do they help keep things in place?
- How large of a space should we tile at a time? With the floor, we did about a 2'x2' section at a time. We are using the 3x6 subway tiles for the walls.
- If the bathroom is 6'x9', and we are tiling about 4' up the wall, about how long will this take? All of Saturday? Sunday as well?
- Any ideas on how to fix the hole in this picture? I was thinking maybe we should secure a small piece of wood under there and just go for it, any advice?
posted by C&C at 2:15 PM
2 Comments:
I just finished doing a shower with 4x8 subway tile. I would mark out where your tile are going to sit with pencil lines. You won't be able to see the lines with the thinset that well, they're good reference for cutting. Especially if the walls aren't plumb, and the end tiles change size as you move up the wall.
I set a bottom course first, and let it set up, so the tile can't slip. I combed the thinset across on the second pass, so it slips less. I only did as much thinset as I could set in 10-15 min. if the thinset gets a skin on it, it needs to be recombed.
It look me probably 4 days to do our 53"x7'-8" bath, wich was the shower to 6'-4", the floor, and 4' wainscotting on one wall. The wainscotting isn't done yet, I need to build a vanity, then I'll tile up to it.
This was my first tiling experience, so keep that in mind.
What derek said about the wall tile works well if your bathtub is level. If it's not, put a ledger board and start laying tiles above it. WHen those set up, you can lay tiles below it and tape them to the previous tile so they don't slip down. I have some pics of the process on my blog. Do a search for "marble" on there and you'll see how I did it. My tiles were 12X12 so it shouldn't be a problem with subway tile.
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