Ceramic Tiling: From a Newbie to a Newbie

So it took me a while to get around to blogging about this project, mostly because I just wanted to be done with it, I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to relive it. I was happy with solely enjoying it when I walked into the kitchen. This endeavor really wasn't that bad, we just didn't know what we were getting ourselves into.

My home has the bland, boring, washed-out linoleum in its kitchen. Without much thought or discussion my boyfriend Aaron and I decided to do our own tiling job to give our house a statement, and just add some creativity. Neither of us had any experience with tiling, but we stubbornly decided to charge ahead and figure it out as we went along.

Pulling up the linoleum was ridiculously easy! We were ready to go into battle, but luckily our linoleum wasn't even glued down. Many home improvement places do sell floor scrapers to help you out it you floor is glued down.

First thing we agreed on was a frugal plan. We did not want to spend every penny we had when we knew we could do it on a budget. There is this fantastic store here in Missoula called Home Resource. This place sells home improvement and building materials that have been used/donated! It is an absolutely amazing place to meander through. Any way, this is where we went to get our tiles.

On average, the 12 inch tiles were about 60 cents each, which is a pretty rare find in any major home improvement store. We took a couple trips there, picking out tiles that were within a general color theme. We ended up with a lot of tans, browns, and mochas which all looked really good together.

I was tricked into laying out the tiles because I was blinded by flattery when Aaron called me the creative one. Looking back, I would say laying out the tiles was probably my favorite task. Since we did have different tiles, there was a bit of creativity put into it. I also learned that no 12" tile is the same. Understandably they can be different thicknesses but different sizes?! This caused much cursing and frustration, but in the end we returned the abnormal tiles and stumbled into a great sale at Lowes where we were able to stock up on 57 cent tiles. These tiles were so beautiful; they were all the same! Because of this, we were able to tile our laundry room all one glorious cappuccino color, and we mixed in a lot of the cappuccino in our kitchen.

Laundry Room With Spacers... and a Pug

We used 1/8" spacers for our tiles. They were kind of a pain in the tush to use with tiles that are slightly different, but if you are working with all the same, they are an OCD godsend! My first instinct was to start tiling from a wall, but all the experts will tell you to tile from the very center of your room. I sort of did a mixture of both since there was a bit of shifting. In the end it worked quite well.

Tile Clippers

Tile Cutter

                                                              Tile cutting; ugh. This was definitely my least favorite task. Since the beginning my boyfriend thought we were  going to be just fine using little tile clippers that we picked up from Home Depot. I had a feeling that we would need something a little bit more substantial, but we could blow up the bridge when we got there. When it came time to blow up the bridge, we did some research and found a fancy little tile cutter. This thing cost about 20 dollars from Home Depot, and it worked gloriously. The tile clippers were great for small little nips like corners and such, but the tile cutter was able to cut tiles in half, which we needed to do sometimes.

After all of our tiles were set, and cut and laid out perfectly, it was time to put down the mortar.We just got the grey mortar at Home Depot, it seem to be kinda hard to go wrong with mortar. There were two options; one for darker tiles and one for light colored tiles. Aaron got an attachment for his electric drill that could be used for mixing. This is something that is necessary when mixing mortar. We also looked up smaller 'recipes' online; we were not interested mixing the entire 55 pound bag at our first go.

Notched Trowel

Your mortar is mixed, your tiles are laid out, you should have knee pads on your knees, latex gloves on your hands, and a bucket of water with a big sponge in it by your side. The first time I mortared the tiles down, my fingers began to crack just from them getting so dry. The bucket of water and sponge are just a little safety net. If you make any mistakes  you can wipe it up quickly instead of letting it turn to cement... which it does. Laying mortar was a lot easier and more fun than I had anticipated. I used the cheapest notched trowel out there and it worked just fine.

Laying Mortar

You scoop up a bunch of mortar with the smooth end of your trowel, slap it all down, kinda of even it out, then use the notched side at about a 30 degree angle to really even it out, then gently set your tile down.  Make  sure you start the mortar in a far back corner that you won't have to walk on for 24 hours. If you step on it before then, your tiles slide and squish around, that's not attractive.

I busted out the mortar for my 200 square foot-ish kitchen in about 4 hours. I was going pretty steady and strong. By this time my kitchen appliances
and booth had been shoved into my living room, so I was
ready to have my house back to normal.

Now your tiles are all set! After 24 hours you can get started on grout. We got our grout from Home Resource. A "Latte" color for the kitchen and "Delorean Grey" for the laundry room. We made sure to use grout without sand, sometimes the grout with sand will scratch up your tiles when you are applying it.  One big mistake we made was mixing up the grout in the same bucket that we had mixed the mortar in. It is next to impossible to completely clean out all of the mortar, especially after it dries, so just make sure to get a different bucket once you start the grout process.

Floater

Our grout seemed to be extra dry, I was worried we hadn't mixed it up right, but a quick video search online showed me that some grout is just really dry. A grout floater came in handy, especially for scraping off the excess grout. Otherwise I used my gloved hand to kinda shove the grout into the cracks. To use the floater: you scoop up some grout, and slap it down onto your tiles, push the grout around to make sure it gets in the cracks, then use your floater at a 90 degree angle to make sure it is all level, you scoop up the excess or just keep grouting.

The toughest part about grout is getting up the haze that is left behind. After a few hours you can go over your tile with a wet sponge. We then used a dry towel and cheese cloth, and then we mopped the tiles a couple times with with vinegar water. Finally the last of the haze was gone! After 12 hours we moved all of our stuff back into the kitchen, and enjoyed the fruits of our labor.

Before

After