Laying ceramic tile?

No, I'm not that desperate.

Yet.

I'm working on buying a house which is partially on a slab. The 'great room' is on a slab, everything else is on a crawl space. It has carpet, due to the Curmudgeonling's asthma the carpet must go away immediately if not sooner. I'd ideally like to hardwood it but that would involve some thickness problems at the front door (which already has slick ceramic tile in front of it), not to mention all the possible moisture problems. I don't really want to do laminate in there, to me it just never really looks 'good'. So what I am seriously considering is 18x18 ceramic tile in a 'stone' look pattern. I get the basics: floor has to be flat, properly mix the mortar, then grout between them and finally scrub off the grout residue. But are there any real pitfalls to laying this stuff?

Some of the home improvement stores do classes on working with tile.

it's easy. Really easy. Grout is messy, and get a long block of wood to help level the tiles when you're floating them into place.

Even with a flat floor you have to watch that the tiles go down level and even. An 18x18 tile would likely use something like a 1/4x3/8 notched trowel and that's enough adhesive to allow the tiles to go down unevenly if you're not mindful.

Spacers are your friend.

Buy a wet diamond saw - they're cheap now and worth it. Even a 4"er works great

The best way to put a hole in a tile (for a water line, say) is a dremel and rotozip 1/8" shank tile bit. I tried everything else short of a shotgun and that bit was the easiest, cleanest and fastest. I used a Harbor Freight grade dremel too - nothing fancy.

Home Depot sells a grout in DeLorean Gray - just sayin'

EDIT!

Glass tiles don't cut for E36 M3 unless you go sloooooooooooooooooooooowly with the diamond saw - which apparently is the wrong tool for that job anyway

Come get your knee pads before you start.

Use these or the gaps will never line up.

That's all I got. Give me a shout and I might be able to give you a hand.

never had any issue with glass tiles and a good diamond blade on the wet saw.

i hate spacers on floors but i've been doing it long enough i guess that i find them more annoying than helpful, especially if your tiles are not all exactly the same size.

I think you will have to put something down over the concrete. I am thinking that mortar doesn't bond to finished concrete.

Better check it out first.

Toyman, I definitely plan to put you to work.

From what I gather, the mortar more or less binds the tiles together but not necessarily to the concrete. You do have to seal any cracks so they won't allow moisture into the mortar. There's a self leveling concrete that is poured on an uneven slab, give it 24 hours and you now have a perfectly flat surface.

This will probably be a 'one time only' project so I was leaning toward renting a tile saw if I have to use one. HF has a 4" for $49 and a 7" for $79, but then I have to store the freakin' thing. The room doesn't have any weirdness, it's all straight lines, so I was considering the Dremel Saw Max, it has a diamond blade available for just this purpose and I can use it for other stuff too. But it's a dry use only. Is wet sawing really that much better?

Make sure you don't leave any edges proud. With a big tile, you need to make sure there is good adhesion to the floor, so you may need to put the mortar on the tile as well as the floor. They will crack if the wood floor has any bounce to it at all, and if there is a crack in concrete, the crack will transfer up into the tile. When the mortar is still wet, make sure to clean the grout lines out, because irs a real bitch to dig it out after its hard. Do not walk on the tiles for at least 24 hours after laying them. There are several different styles of surface finish. Some of them need a sealer, which is kind of a pain. White grout looks good for about 45 minutes, after which you will wish you had gone grey.

Don't do it like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWclsBn1Eoc

I did a tile floor recently and used a trick that a friend told me about. Use dry grout to clean the haze off the tile after filling the joints. Worked great on smooth surface glazed tile.The basic idea is to use some dry grout sort of like scouring powder to clean the tile, it also tops up the joints a bit. Grout the joints like normal and wait 15-30 minutes for it to set up. Sprinkle a handful or two of dry mortar over the area and rub it around with a dry rough towel to remove the haze. Push the excess around with a soft broom a bit to fill and clean the joints. Then sweep it up with a shop vac. The tile was clean, the joints were full, and it was fast. Much easier than the damp sponge method.

One caution is to wear a mask, dry mortar is dusty and not fun to breathe.There are similar methods described online that use damp sawdust and/or burlap. Using damp sawdust would probably keep the dust down but I didn't have any handy.

Good luck.

Laying ceramic tile blows. THey make very nice 18" vinyl peel and stick tiles that you can grout. Theyre more friendly to install, can be cut with a utility knife, is more forgiving if your floor isnt square and level, installs in less than a quarter of the time, and feels warmer on your feet and softer on your elbows (for when you fall due to inebriation like me ) . As someone who has tiled 3 bathrooms, 2 showers, a backsplash, and 300 sq.ft of kitchen/dining room with ceramic/stone tile the traditional way, the peel and stick + vinyl grout method is LIGHTYEARS BETTER in every conceivable way.

Hard on the back and knees. It takes a lot longer than most people think.

Other than that, not hard.

The last homeowner I worked with who did their own tilework took 3 weeks to do a job that would have taken me 3-4 days. Don't be too optimistic.

This is incorrect. The bond to the floor is very important, especially on large tiles, especially on differing substrates (concrete and crawl):

Curmudgeon wrote: From what I gather, the mortar more or less binds the tiles together but not necessarily to the concrete. You do have to seal any cracks so they won't allow moisture into the mortar.

This is a big over-simplification:

Curmudgeon wrote: There's a self leveling concrete that is poured on an uneven slab, give it 24 hours and you now have a perfectly flat surface.

Speaking from bad experience, if you're sticking tile down on something like a wood floor (or particle board in this particular case), get the correct adhesive and grout that can deal with the floor's expansion and movement.

Guy who did tile the bathroom in my house in the UK (who did that before I bought it) didn't. Guess what the results were.

The first tile laid is the really important one.
My experiences are only tiling a half bath floor and kitchen back splash. Both were easy but a great room is a much larger undertaking.

I did lay about 500 complex sq ft of Pergo as a "move out" technique in a former house and I have vowed to never do it again.

Get those plastic corners to align the tiles. Ignore the bumps on the tile and their promise that they will line up right using them.

Start in the center and work out. Don't start on one wall and work away from it. Measure and calculate to avoid those skinny tiles that look so cheesy and home-done. Keep them fat.

Use a chalk line. Use several. Keep things square and straight.

Tap down flat and even and level. Tiles sitting high and low trip you and look bad.

Seal the grout so it doesn't stain.

Get all your tiles and one time, in a common batch. That way the color matches perfectly. Keep the extra for future repairs.

Use the right trowels, don't try to make do with something else. You do want those groves in the mortar.

Consider your application. Tile is cold and hard. It will feel cold on the bare feet in August, and in December. Anything dropped on it will shatter. Be it a dinner plate or your teeth. If the tiles are glazed, they are wonderfully slick when wet.

BoxheadTim wrote: Speaking from bad experience, if you're sticking tile down on something like a wood floor (or particle board in this particular case), get the correct adhesive and grout that can deal with the floor's expansion and movement. Guy who did tile the bathroom in my house in the UK (who did that before I bought it) didn't. Guess what the results were.

Backboard is important, that way you have a stable base.

We just laid some one foot square tiles in our kitchen. Pops has tons more experience at it, so he laid them. I did most of the grouting, and aside from being hard on the knees and back, I actually enjoyed it. Found it relaxing almost.

Those spacers are just a guide. If the floor or walls are a little wonky, and they will be, the spacers will get you into trouble. Use them on the first couple of rows. Use a chalk line to snap a few guidelines. Stand back an look at them. Adjust a necessary. The gaps may need to shrink or grow to satisfy the straight line.

I have considered the peel n stick vinyls but I keep coming back to the ceramics. The vinyls will scratch and tear pretty easily and since there is a good chance furniture will get moved around right now I plan to avoid it. I will use them in the laundry room, though, and if I redo the kitchen floor (not real likely anytime soon) probably in there as well. My mom's kitchen is done in stone, it's beautiful but if you drop something it sounds like a grenade went off. Whatever it is won't survive the drop, either.

Down here it doesn't really matter if the floors feel cold, in fact that's probably a bonus when it's 105 deg outside.

I am avoiding the porcelain slick tiles, I'm sticking with the ones that have a grain pattern, that will give some traction. Since it's going on concrete, the sub floor should be pretty stable. In fact, the whole concrete slab thing is why I plan to do it this way in the first place, I am not crazy about gluing down hardwood just to have moisture wick up and ruin it from the underside.

Pergo or other laminate is an outside possibility. To me the 'spongy' feel is a bit unsettling, I like my hardwood floors, well, hard. The rest of the house will get hardwood (either engineered or solid), I have not settled on the exact color etc yet.

I've got a master bathroom out to the studs and joists right now. Roughing in pluming and drains tomorrow, new sub floor going in then framing, drywall and much tile.

This time rather than cement board glued and screwed to the sub floor I'm going all 21st century and using Schluter Ditra decoupling membrane under the floor tile, and Kerdi membrane under the shower tile.

It's well regarded by everyone except cranky old tile-luddites who won't try anything new. The folks at Fine Homebuilding and The Journal of Light Construction love the products

Ditra set in un-modified thinset over the properly etched concrete, set the tile on that.

I'm a ham fisted moron, and even i've done tile pretty well. Two caveats for 18" tiles: the first is you need to make sure everything is dead level - with smaller tiles you can get away with elevation changes, not so much with the bigger stuff. Self levelling cement is ~$25 for a 50# bag, it goes on easy and I'd recommend it under the tile backer board to level that dude out. The other is big tiles mean a more expensive tile cutter - i bought a diamond saw on sale at Harbor Freight and it's been worth every bit of the $50 I spent, but I think it maxes out at 16" for diagonal cuts.

I prefer the more expensive Hardie backer board to cement backer - more expensive but cuts better and never crumbles. I'm real curious about the Schluter Ditra membrane mentioned above - could be the hot ticket for our basement.

Finally, when I did our kitchen I installed radiant heating under the tile. Kind of a PITA to set up , but on a winter's day the results are fantastic!

Well, I'm not a ham fisted moron, but if I say Schluter Ditra decoupling membrane a few times in a row, I feel smarter.

The Henry brand self leveling cement specifically says NOT to acid etch the concrete sub floor, on most rough finished slabs (common) a thorough sweeping, vacuuming and mopping is all that's required. That of course includes removing glued down foam, old vinyl tile, stuff like that. They say if it needs to be roughed up, it should be done with abrasives. Once poured and it sets, they say to mortar the ceramic directly to it. There's some versions which set slower thus allowing more work time. Since it will probably be just me and my brother I'll probably go with that.

they make mortars for bonding to different subfloors. some are for cement, some are for plywood, and the $5 a bag stuff doesn't stick to anything.

look for the $13-15/bag versabond or megabond(lowes vs home depot brand/name, same basic stuff). i use it almost exclusively as it is very sticky and bonds well to concrete floors.

the schluter ditra and kerdi stuff is great, if you need it. if you have a nice stable concrete floor you do not, no matter how right mike holmes claims it is.

if you do not need self leveler, don't buy it because it is insanely expensive.

the biggest part is starting off square. never assume anything.