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How to Lay Floor Tiles

Posted on April 27th, 2009 by Carmelia
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Laying down floor tiles on your own ensures that you put them down exactly as you want them. Doing it correctly is also crucial, to make sure that they have a long life to be useful and make your house beautiful. Here’s how.

Tools

  • Porcelain or ceramic tiles
  • Cement backer board
  • Sponges
  • Tile nippers
  • Knee pads
  • Tile cutter or saw
  • Tape measure
  • Square
  • Grout
  • Rubber float
  • Chalk line
  • Clean water
  • Eye protection
  • Buckets
  • Thinset
  • Hammer
  • Nails
  • Notched trowel

Procedure

Preparing the Floor

  1. Start with a blank slate by removing previous moldings, baseboards, old and pre-existing floor coverings or even old tiles.
  2. If you intend to use tiles on your floors, the floors should be stable. Otherwise, the tiles will give way and crack over time. To stabilize your floor, set and adjust nails in the subfloor as needed. Sister the floor joints under the floor and use bridging between the joists.
  3. Once you’ve stabilized the floor, install the cement backerboard onto it. First attach it using manufacturer recommended glue and nail it into the floor joists using two-inch galvanized nails.
  4. Go to the door area where the door moves about. Take a tile and place it on top of the backerboard, and try pushing the door over it. If it does not, trim the bottom part of the door until it does fit.
  5. Clean up the debris.

Laying Out the Tiles

  1. Use a tape measure to measure the area of your room in square feet. Then divide the area according to the tile sizes that you intend on using. This calculation will provide you information on how many tiles you will need. Buy a little more than your calculations because most room areas are not perfect and you will need to break up tiles to fit the angles and corners of your room.
  2. Take a chalk and mark the center of the room using two intersecting straight lines, one running across the length of the room, the other the width. The lines should have 90 degree angles between each other.
  3. Start a rough layout of your tiles by placing them on the floor along the two lines. There should be spacers between each tile to make room for the tile grout.
  4. Ideally, full tiles must be used in the center of the floor area, with equal measurements of the width of the cut tiles on each side of the floor. Adjust until the tiles fulfill these requirement or they become more aesthetically pleasing.

Setting the Tiles

  1. Prepare the thinset as per the instructions. Its consistency when prepared should be similar to peanut butter, and is used to hold the tiles in place without taking up too much space.
  2. Use the notched trowel to spread the thinset on the areas where you will lay the first tiles.
  3. Only set down the tiles to the areas you can easily reach while on your knees.
  4. Start your way from the center and work outwards to the walls, each area progressing equally. The last area you must tile are the the border tiles and the cut tiles.
  5. Cut the tiles using the tile saw.
  6. Use the tile nippers to cut out more precise shapes out of the tiles, such as corners or rounded areas. Work using small “nips” at a time.
  7. Leave the tiles to set for 24 hours.

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