Build an Incredible Bedroom Accent Wall on a Budget! | DIY Tutorial

hey guys jeff from home renovation and i'm up in my master bedroom today and i've got an awesome project it's all about how to build a feature wall telling you right now if you go with something that looks like natural stone if it's a natural occurring product it's timeless we're going to create this accent wall we're going to go with porcelain tile we're going to go floor to ceiling and we're going to make it absolutely amazing and then i picked the most difficult tile project available to do this wall so i can walk you through all the processes of layout and design and your strategy and how to measure how to start it how to finish it and how to make it so that you don't have any lippage i'm in an 1880 farmhouse this wall has got bends and curves and everything else i'm going to go through all my tips and tricks on how to tile the wall so you can be like a tile pro when you go work on your project at home that way you can impress all your friends and family all right listen let's just get right into this because i'm going to show you what i'm talking about when i'm talking about the challenges of working in a room like this one of them right out of the gate is i've got weird doors in the room right and my center point on this wall is not center of what you see it's a little off-center so when i'm laying out this design i've got to try to make sure that i get that illusion of space way up here in the corner i've got a peak on each side and that is almost eight feet wide now my tile is one foot by four foot long and i'm going horizontal so i'm going to have an eight foot wide wall and i've got to be close to those corners because that dimension there is only 93 inches i've got to be close enough to the corners that if i want to cheat a little bit one way or the other it still looks centered on the room which is going to be really crucial other things i've got to deal with today is i've got light switches and plugs check this out [Music] that's right i got a bow wall lovely but there are ways that you can get around that and i'm just going to let you know that if you're going to go with tile the rule of thumb is simple the bigger the tile the more difficult the install i know in the back your head you might be thinking the complete opposite it's like well there's less pieces to put on the wall but you have to think about tile as it doesn't have any flexibility so when you install it you've got to install it flush right flush can be hard to do if you don't start flush so we're going to go through the process and show you all the tips and tricks how the cheats so you can make it look flush if it's not or you can build it flush if you need to the other thing we're dealing with of course is well it's pretty straight this part of the wall bends in a little bit that's going to be not a problem because with tile you can always back fill the tile and add more cement we'll get into that later but the other challenge we have and this is the biggest issue let me just show you this real quick there's the tile all right this is not the finished side but when you measure and i'm going in horizontal that tile man that is just 11 and eleven sixteenths yeah we have to measure with the sixteenths because today we're going to go with a 1 16 grout space now here's the thing if i had exactly eight feet floor to ceiling and if this tile with a 1 8 spacer was exactly 8 feet i'm laughing if it's a little short i can go to 1 8 of a spacer because you can increase your grout line in order to fill the bigger space but because i need a full quarter of an inch i'm not going with quarter inch grout line i'm not trying to make it look like it was done back in 1950 i'm trying to go modern so we need thin which means that i'm gonna have because this is eight feet one inch old house right this is what i'm dealing with so i got an extra inch on top i'm gonna end up with almost two inches of extra space over the course of the wall because this is a quarter inch shy and it's gonna be eight rows high so let me just throw that in the on the wall all right so on this channel you know i like to talk about the end from the beginning right you need to know where you're going in order to get there and have a successful job so let's just draw this out this is roughly what my tile job is going to look like there we go okay that's really horrible because it's a rectangle but it's actually going to be 8 by 8 feet don't be too hard on me but here's the thing here's the floor and here's the ceiling and i've got one inch of extra space and two inches of extra space now like i said if i put in quarter inch grout line i can stretch that so it goes top to bottom but that'll look ugly so what we're going to do instead is we're going to keep in mind i have two options here i can cut the first tile in half right and i can put in like a half tile and then finish with the small piece up top that'll look nasty or i can design this so that my ceiling is where the tile finishes okay and down here i've got my three inches all right now i've got a six inch baseboard and if i cut the baseboard around the tile after the fact it's going to look just fine and here's why this feature wall is actually designed to have a cabinet in front of it so all of a sudden having that tile not make it all the way to the floor is not a real big issue you're going to find when you go out to buy stone and tile that almost everything is designed for eight or nine foot walls okay small tile for kitchen is designed for the 18 inches between the upper and lower cabinets and tile on walls is designed for an eight or nine foot wall if you have any variation in that you're going to have to get creative so what we're going to do is we're going to do the math from the ceiling down and we're gonna install a nailing strip to put our tile on and i'm just grabbing a piece of door stop okay we're gonna throw a laser level line on the wall we're gonna install this three inches off the ground but instead of three i'm gonna go with two three quarter inches because i've done the math and i know that this side is actually a little shorter than this side all right so i'm gonna have a grout line up at the top and i know that if i give myself an extra quarter of an inch mercy when i get up to about the fifth row if i need to because i can measure as i go if i need to i can go from 1 16 to 1 8 of a spacer because as soon as you start looking up a little thicker grout line looks just as thin as everything else okay it's a little trick of the eye you can use so if you're wondering about how am i going to manage and compensate if my math is a little wrong give yourself a little bit extra mercy at the beginning is the secret to success i picked up a box of these these are little spacers all right they come as a kit and they're designed for making the surface level we'll get into that in a minute but they come with a wedge and that wedge right there allows you to manipulate the tile so you can go from 1 8 to a 16 or somewhere in between you can manipulate the tile just a little bit especially over a large space to end up flush at the ceiling there have options because the cement usually has the bonding power if you buy the good stuff to hold it to the wall and still move around on the wall for a good hour or two so when you get the after the first half is done you've mixed a make a fresh batch of cement for the second half of the wall and then you've got all the time and flexibility to really mess around and make sure everything is just perfect before it all sets up on you that's money in the bank all right so let's take that information that we've got all sorted out here we know that there's a stud in this wall so here we go this is a great way to measure from the top down now there's here's my eight foot mark and i know i got eight rows of tile they're going to be a quarter inch shy of the 12 inch so times 2 is 94 inch right and we're going to go a quarter inch mercy and there's my spot now i'm using these monster screws put it right there on the spot now that'll carry the weight just fine resist the temptation to put a long screw all the way on the wall you never know where the electrical is hiding every once in a while so i'm gonna do something creative it'll just wreck your day okay now we're gonna go level on this and put the bubble right on top of the screw i'm gonna pick my spot until i'm perfectly happy with it i'm going to hold it with my one hand okay and then i'm quickly draw a reference line here okay now it's just about finding the other studs now in an old house it's easy you can actually look under the drywall and you can see them i'll show you there's no bottom plate there it is so you can just that's where the stud is that's too much fun actually when you think about it [Music] it's not uncommon in a lot of tile applications on walls that will actually use a starter strip like that uh any bathroom that's not a wet area we always use a starter strip because we don't have a waterproof membrane that we're compromising so this is a great way to start if you're doing another kind of bathroom project and you're hanging wall tile you can measure off the ground to the height of the first tile put in a starter strip like this so that it carry the weight of the stone and then the next day you can always add the bottom row pizza cake so real quick before we get into the project i'm going to show you all the tools and materials you're going to need and that'll be like a little shopping list for you if you're going to pull something like this off at home okay first of all you need two pills one to mix your cement and of course one with full of clean water and you're gonna want a new sponge all right that's so you can keep things clean as you go the biggest mistake that everybody makes with tiling especially on the internet you see it every time is they have all kinds of cement in between all the grout lines and then they have to try to clean that out after the fact before they go out maddening all right i'm going to show you how to avoid that most common mistake so that you don't risk chipping your stone while you're cleaning out the ground the cement nobody ever shows that mistake but i'm telling you right now ninety percent of the tile projects done on the internet have all got chip tile because they had to clean the cement after the fact that's just the way it is you need a measuring tape uh knife and here's the wedge system i was talking about now this i picked this up not because it's my favorite but because it's available at the local home depot i know a lot of folks especially in the residential world you're not going to go and down to the tile supplier to get your materials and you don't mind paying two three four five times as much to get the same stuff at the home depot because it's convenient so here's how this works it's a wedge the tile goes in between the two and the flat part goes on the bottom and the more you force this together the more compression there is underneath behind the stone and that helps get rid of the lippage we'll show you that as well and if you aren't going to invest in that kind of system i'm also going to show you how to just work with regular spacers this is a 1 16 spacer read the package nice and simple you can use this as well and there are pros and cons to using the wedge system for sure to get a professional look but if you're not allergic to blood sweat and tears and really making this a labor of love i'll show you how to use this as well you're going to want to get a rubber mallet and the reason for this is large format tile you're going to be trying to compress and collapse the ridges on that cement and if you don't have something to put pressure on properly like a rubber mallet you're gonna gonna have a hard time getting a good bond okay you just can't manipulate that much cement behind one big stone unless you got one so make sure you don't pass that part up once we get into this you'll see how valuable it is you're gonna need a mask i got so many of these laying around left over from kovid i'm gonna be using these for a while it's just to keep the cement dust out of my lungs while i'm mixing i'm old and i don't like going up and down the stairs a lot so i'm going to mix in the house and so that is going to be the level of protection i'm using today also need a laser level this is basic it does a straight across and straight up line nice and simple you can always go to our amazon store to get all these tools and materials you're going to need click the video link below and you can go and check that out all right also before we get started if you're interested in seeing us do like a geometric shape feature wall made out of wood and paint i'm humming and hawing about doing it because the whole world is doing it but if you want to get my take on it i think i got a few tips and tricks up my sleeve that might be helpful let me know in the comments section what kind of feature wall what kind of shapes you're looking for be interested to hear your comments on that okay cheers all right we are going to do a little bit of cutting because i've got to cut around my electrical plugs so you're going to need a grinder with a ceramic new porcelain tile blade okay don't cheap out and get the six dollar one you're gonna need about a forty dollar blade for this project if you're gonna buy really good tile you need a really good blade just can't have one without the other so before we mix cement i'm going to just show you this we have to have a center line because as soon as we make cement i'm ready to go baby so like let's get this done this line here my laser line goes right up to my peak like i said before the peak is almost eight feet wide so i need to have my tile coming to about here i don't want it too close to this switch let's just go right on that one all right then we're going to go 47 inches from there and this is a great way to make that work there's my center line i'm just going to bring my laser level over that's all i need because once i get my first couple tiles on i'll just keep following out corner to corner remember i purchased rectified porcelain here so every tile is exactly the same size there's no variation be careful when you're shopping for stone or tile if they can have up to a quarter inch variation in both dimensions right the width and the length so be careful for that if you want to install simple and have it look perfect then you got to buy good stone might mean an extra couple bucks a square foot but we're talking about 64 square feet and do you want to waste four or five hours of your life trying to fix everything up perfect when forty dollars would have solved that problem me neither all right guys so uh here's my cement mixer this is what it looks like it's really simple it's not like the same as the drywall mud mixer okay get one of these and then we're going to want to make about a half a bag of cement and that takes about about that much water don't ask me how i know that's been doing tile for a long time the pail is full to about here right about two and a half inches and if you start there and you put in a little bit of cement and mix it up you're allowed when you're mixing cement to mix it and add a little bit more cement or more water till you get to the consistency you want as long as you don't let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes once you let it sit the curing starts to happening and then adding water cement after that fact is a no-no okay so make sure you get it the way you want it right away i'm going to go through what cement should look like right now well here's it for the rest of the power tools it's my slow mixer i use this for drywall mud and cement and thinset all right there you go if you don't have one of these you could use a regular um chuck drive drill just make sure you're mixing small batches you don't want to overwork the drill okay here we go now this is my thin set i'm using today there's no such thing as the right bag of cement for an interior wall in a dry area okay so you can get the cheapest stuff you can find they sell a bag of cement for 15 bucks at the tile supply store just google tile supply wholesalers i think it's from richard this one's probably about a 25 bag but if you go to home depot it's 45 and up uh the stuff from schluter all set it's a brilliant cement it's meant to handle every situation and every situation possible known to mankind but that stuff's 65 to 80 a bag so you get what you pay for but in this situation we don't need a whole lot of science we just need something that's going to bond and dry so let's not get into the comments section about i should have picked a better cement ah yeah that's true um generally i like to use ultra light for interior walls like this but because i had some cement left over from the patio job i'm just using what i have it's not gonna hurt anybody ah oh yeah i'm not even wearing my mask that's brilliant eh [Music] oh look at all that dangerous toxin yeah for everybody who wants me to live another five years to continue making videos for you guys this is for you right away i'm way too soupy and that's okay i'm just throwing another couple handfuls [Music] and now i'm way too dry and the way you know this is you want it to be what's the right consistency here somewhere in between pancake batter and cool whip because once we're done mixing we're going to let it sit for 10 minutes so it sets up okay and that's the point where it's going to have a little bit of stiffness um once i get this way i like it we'll bring the camera right into the pail and you know demonstrate what you're looking for okay [Music] so you can see as i'm mixing this that it's peaking up okay kind of like cool whip once it starts peaking up that's a good indication that you're ready to go it all sag down but after 10 minutes of setting up when i put it on with the trowel it'll actually hold itself in shape and that's perfect because you want it to be able to hold itself in ridges until you use the tile and collapse the ridges with your own pressure here's a pro tip for you i threw my laser level where my tile is going to finish now i'm going to just mark about an inch in from that that's where i want my cement to finish once i get the first row on it's real easy to work and build but for right now i want to make sure i don't have any of the cement squeezing out past that line just makes sense right do that to both sides get started that's my center line and my tile is 47 inches and takes me to here and so i want to come to here with my mud so you can see how these peaks are kind of flattened out watch this how stiff this has gotten so that still feels nice and soft right so what i'm recommending with wall tile one is this size like anything over 12 by 12 you're going to want it's a quarter inch wide on the tooth 3 8 deep and a quarter inch wide again okay that's the size used um the other option would go to half by half by half all right that's another option usually we use that on floors for walls it's not as necessary and there's a couple of rules here uh if it's in a dry area you can only need 80 coverage on the stone and we'll talk about that in a minute as well let's stick with this there's a lot of technical information i'm going to get you i mean i'm almost done building this thing but there's a lot of technical stuff to come still and so with 80 percent adhesion basically means if if you got a good grab here here here and here and here you're okay right so the wall having a lot of movement isn't going to really affect your day so i'm going to show you what we're going to see when we put it on the wall we're going to get this and these ridges are what we're going to have collapsing when we push the stone on because it's ridging and holding its shape i know it's ready to be used so now all that's left is to stick the stuff on the wall the secret to doing this is getting it on the wall without getting it all over the place all right less is more it generally holds its shape right so if you go like this lay that on there we're only going one stone which is 12 inches or 11 and three quarters if you're really paying attention all right we don't need a whole lot of cement here yet now in the world of tile enthusiasts they will tell you that there are rules about which way the lines should go so when you're collapsing your ridges might i suggest the rules are a little bit stupid they came up with these rules long before they had large format tile the basic idea is that the way that you draw the the line is that's the way that air escapes when you're collapsing the tile okay and so they always tell you to leave the groove running on the shortest way of the tile so if your tile is six inches by a foot long you go on the short side because that'll work if it's 12 by 12 pick a side it doesn't matter they'll both work if it's 12 by 24 all of a sudden they want you to go it makes no damn difference to be honest with you and if you have a problem with my his opinion on that then then go ahead and get as technical and scientific as you like but just stupid i like to go horizontal when i'm installing horizontal because when i'm installing horizontal i'd like to set my tile in and then collapse the ridges up and away all right and so that's why i do it this way and you may not like my method but it has served me really well over my career that is cement on the wall doesn't look like much but if it's flat you're fine now since there's no such thing as a flat wall i'm gonna suggest that we have an option here one is to back butter the tile which means you take the straight edge of the trowel and you use it to apply a thin layer of cement on the tile itself like buttering toast this is where they got the concept from all right and what this does wherever the tile makes any contact with that cement on the wall at all even in the smallest barely touched it just it's going to bond okay and that is the goal so now we're going to take our big stone here we're going to set it on our wood yeah we're going to slap it on and that's good ah there we go we're almost done now let's take a look at this and we'll see what kind of bond we get all right here we go you'll see i got great pond on that side grape on on that side not so much in the middle because the wall's not flat let's throw some ridges on that part of the tile okay there we go now this is the secret for not having cement in your grout lines remove it i know it's such a trick make sure the tile is clean all right top and bottom one of the benefits of the ridges that we created is it makes room for these tile spacers to be installed okay once you've cleaned you can put in these spacers this is how you do it always put the spacers once you're clean now you can put the spacers in after you've done the cement on the next row if you like that's a good idea but i just want to let you know as long as the area is clean these tabs will then break out nice because right here there's a weak spot and when we take this off we hit from this side and it should just break but if the whole thing is full of cement then it's bonded to the cement as well as the back of the tab and they don't break clean and then people find themselves in there with knives trying to clean all that out that's how you run into trouble okay let's do the next one and we'll take a look at how well this wall is going to work for us for that joint in the middle and then we'll talk about how we can fix that problem if there is one by the way the trowel is 11 inches wide so it's really easy to know how much cement you need okay back to some butter open it up help make sure you get your bond all right let's throw this one on now you don't want to cause any issue with the damage here so you want to have a nice gap over here about a quarter inch and then you can close up to the other tile let's take a look at our pond yeah i'm happy with that there we go now the most important thing going on here right now is this joint this is the only joint that we have at this moment okay you want to put enough pressure on this joint that it pulls the tiles nice and flush together you don't feel a ridge two fingers and a thumb like that you'll get a handle on how much pressure it is that this works with what's good and what's bad you're gonna want one there one in the middle on the other side you see the gap resist the temptation you don't have to fill that with cement remember we're looking for the 80 rule all right we're just going to go with our next row as soon as we measure this off with our laser level the actual height of the tile is irrelevant we want to have the same distance to the laser line from each end of the stone okay before we get going that's how we know we're level and i'm getting the line right on the tape measure itself i'm not trying to read the line on the wall i'm 14 and a half just on the low side of that i'm 14 and believe it a quarter isn't that amazing okay it's an easy fix we're a quarter inch out but you can see here i'm about an eighth of an inch out so what i'm going to do with this [Music] raise that side a little bit i'll try that screwing again [Music] all right let's measure that again this time 14 and a quarter on the money perfect every time so now i've got something that i can build on that's going to be perfectly level so here's a recap so now we've got we've got our first row we've got our lines identified for the the outside our center line we've perfectly level we know that we've done the math this should come out to be exactly 94 inches from the ceiling let's find out if we're there on this side it should say 94 and a quarter actually according to my measurements bam 94 and a quarter okay now i know that i've got exactly the right hole plus a little room for grout at the top the other side i think it's going to be 94 and 8 because it was a little bit different height perfect 94 and 16. but remember with my grout line i'm going to be exactly 94 at the ceiling so i'm gonna have a sixteenth two like three sixteenths i'm sorry three eighths a growling no three sixteenths yeah i like that better which is perfect so now we're gonna have to deal with how to level the tile as we go up with the horizontal because we're covering a bow okay that's a lot trickier than you think because we're going with horizontal lines whenever you have movement if you have your tile the long way is perpendicular to the the bowed stud the tile can follow the contour of the wall pretty good so it's not that big of an issue i mean if it's really exaggerated it'll look stupid if you stand right up to it you can always take some drywall off cut the stud push it in and throw in a screw and that'll straighten it out for you we also need edging okay knowing the end from the beginning i went out and i picked up some of this plastic edging what this is is a three actually a three-eighths edge okay and it goes over the edge of the stone like that because porcelain is not natural stone has a different color and texture than on the face so this is used to cap it all right and that gives it a really nice clean look it also gives you something up against the drywall that you can fill the gap in behind this add a little bit of mud or a caulking and then paint it in and make everything look seamless right so what we're going to do here one of the reasons we wanted to leave some room here for the first stone so that this can slide in behind now for the rest of this installation i don't want it sliding in behind okay i'm just gonna install that nice and long i'm actually going to put this with cement i'm gonna travel it in now from now on in okay just a little bit to get it in position and then i'm not gonna have an issue okay that's how we finish that edge and of course we've got to do with our electrical plugs this is why you need a grinder because with a grinder you can cut any size hole anywhere anytime and usually in smaller holes like one by one for plumbing fixtures you can do that from the back side you don't have to buy special diamond tip drill bits for the your drill or anything like that one grinder is a one stop shop you can tile anything with a grinder if that's the only tool you have to tie with a grinder can make every cut you're ever going to need guaranteed okay or your money back now when dealing with your electrical make sure your power is off okay and tape your screws while you're at it there's always somebody that goes downstairs and goes oh my god the breaker's off and it gives it a flick because they're not not thinking right so like just do that you pull it out keep it horizontal everything is slide over top we're gonna do is we're gonna measure the size of that box okay including the screw holes because remember this is where the the screw goes into that hole and this should sit over top of the plate but now it's going to sit over top of the tile so we want to cut right at the top of that where that hole is so that screw goes in i'll show you in a minute but ideally measure from the stone okay and looking like five and a quarter is perfect and on the other side one and a half is perfect okay so we got one and a quarter i'd say five and a half oh no five and an eighth one and a half wow measure twice cut twice all right and then we also want to measure from here coming across that to me looks like five and three quarters and then seven and seven eighths here we go so i'll take my stone here and i know it offends a lot of people when i call this stone but my god it sure feels like it when you're carrying it doesn't it um let's put on there left to right first five and three quarters now i'm using a black marker not everybody should use a black marker on tile even a polished tile it doesn't necessarily wash off okay so don't take it for granted um i'm quite comfortable with it though so we're just going to kind of draw that square a little rectangle there and remember you've got options with cover plates you can go standard size cover plate which will cover it no problem or you can go with a king size plate like an oversized and even if you make a little bit of a mistake with your grinder don't sweat it and get a new stone okay just make sure you have oversized plates with you when you're working you can always check the oversized plate versus the hole because when you install this it goes left and right it slides around on the screws so you got a little bit of play there it's not a really big issue all right that's that one i figured before we grind we might as well get the other measurement for the other one too alright guys i'm gonna go outside now and just cut my stone only takes a minute now because there's so many different kinds of material and different kinds of cutting tools that are out there if you want to do another research project i did a video not too long ago but all the different cutting tools for tile and different kinds of tile use what tool for so you can check out the link for that in the video description we'll throw a card up here as well for those of you who are on a device and you can actually click a card otherwise i'm just going to go and make a few quick cuts and let's get back to the install okay here we are we'll set on the clips all right make sure that you set the clips just before the tile in a clean joint you won't ever get cement squishing out and that is the ultimate problem that you're going to run into okay we're just going to set them in place for now we'll squeeze them all once we get the other tile because you want to you want to establish all of these see this tile here this can be pounded in a little bit still don't forget we have the rubber mallet for a reason we have the ability for an hour or so to really play around and set all of our depth just perfect so don't be afraid in too much of a hurry to say oh i got a clip i'm going to cramp it down because you might be setting everything too close or too far off the wall get a couple rows in and always be tightening things up behind where you're working and you won't run into this issue this is one of the most famous words ever spoken on hgtv back butter oh boy oh boy oh boy if you know how to back butter you must be a tiler this takes the same skill as buttering toast does not make a tile trade pro you can tell in the draw like this that although it's not overly complicated it is time consuming and so if you're going to hire somebody to do a tile project for you make sure you can afford to pay someone the amount of money that it's worth to get that project done or just learn how to do it yourself because a good tile guy don't be surprised if they're 150 or 200 an hour it's not because they're making a fortunes because the cost of business is expensive let's make a bit of a mess on purpose here oh yeah now it looks like every other homeowner right how do you clean that up jeff how in the world okay a couple quick issues here this area you're not going to get any mud there with a trowel so take it over to the tile put a nice dollop take the heel and clean it up okay make sure you get all the extra cement out of the way get your sponge and cement's messy every time you get something on your sponge just clean it now take the edge of the sponge with your finger okay right here problem solved now you can take your clips you want to get two in behind here because sometimes same thing you don't want any cement in the way okay push them in nice and flush down this way because that's a 1 16 spacer if you have it raised up like that you got the wrong size gap potentially okay here we go and we should put one for every foot i think hey max why not they're not expensive all right there we go i think we're ready to roll take the tile now set it on the clips it's also nice because there's clips it means you're not laying stone against stone and risking tipping the glaze electrical make sure there's a nice gap here so you can close that clip's in the way slide it over gentle i want to make sure that this gap is lined up perfectly something is wrong because this is opened up wider so when in doubt use one of these little spacer clips make sure it's in contact with the ceiling behind the tail and that'll be enough to hold that in position for the next little while you can put these in with your fingers just fine okay you just put it against the edge if you're not catching an edge you know you're good that's actually really good now i have a little room to go closer to the wall up here [Music] all right [Music] okay the other thing you want to do right here off the edge i already have my first problem get the cement away from the edge now you want to use the clip going behind and bring that nice and flush use as many as you need that makes it perfect this gap is easy to clean up afterwards all right you want to have no visible line here okay you don't want to have to rely on the grout to clean that up so use the wedges and make it nice and snug and if you need to cheat and put some backer in there just to fill it up so that when it's dry it's not going anywhere you can take a little bit of cement and finger that in here okay just in a couple of spots all right okay there we go so now we've got some backer when it's all set up it's not moving generally speaking the rest this won't be an issue there's cement on it so make contact with the tile every time i stick in a wedge it'll make it perfect now we just gotta do the whole rest of the piece okay now for people who don't want to spend twenty dollars on the wedges and the clips and you wanna spend six dollars on just the spacers you can i'll show you how to use them problem is you're going to get lippage but i'll show you how to use it anyway just because now the difference with these neck spacers you don't have to be quite as meticulous while you're working okay because you're not having anything in behind the tile all you're doing with these spacers is setting them in place after put the stone on all right so let's back butter a tile and i'll show you what i mean i want to have to come up with a new phrase like there's not a there's not a home renovation show on the planet that doesn't use that phrase and i don't know why now in this case you have to be more careful because you don't have the clips in place to protect the edge of the tile so you gotta use your fingers okay got to get it in place this is where it gets messy you want to wash your stone before you open this up to put in the clips and lift and stab the danger here is as you're lifting you're also putting pressure and see right away this is in further than this one so then you have to be real careful to watch your lippage that's it all right the next day when that product is dry just take a pair of pliers you can grab it even if it's buried in cement and you pull it straight up okay and so that the one good thing about this system is it guarantees that you aren't going to get big chunks of plastic stuck in your grout line that you have to remove because you can't grow it otherwise so there's a given a go here but i prefer to just work clean and use the tile leveling clip system get a better result okay well now that that's done i think it's looking pretty damn fine um i'm going to continue the video but tomorrow we're going to grow this thing in the video three notes one work clean i just did cement work all day long and i'm still i could go for dinner uh clean your tools when you're finished at the end of every day and i usually like to do it halfway through the day as well okay because if you keep your cl tools clean then you're not going to be tempted to throw them in the garbage and waste your money secondly if you live in some areas in this north american climate or around the world you're going to find the code requires you to use cement board as a backer not drywall generally that's the case in areas where they're prone to earthquakes um the problem with going with stone on a wall in an earthquake zone is that there's so much shaking that the paper delaminates off the drywall under the weight of the tile okay and so you don't want that crashing down and becoming part of the problem so make sure you check out your codes other than that we're going to come back tomorrow we're going to use a grout it's going to be an unsanded grout we're going to get it done nice and quick and then we're going to be able to show you what this looks like when the feature wall is all finished you know and for those of you who aren't familiar with our channel you know my name is jeff we do a lot of renovations and remodeling projects on our channel it's not just design aspects so consider subscribing to the channel hit the bell for notifications and get in the comments section let us know who you are and the kind of projects you're working on and ask questions feel free i'm in the comments section every day and i love to help cheers okay it's next day boom we're ready to roll now listen just a word of warning whenever you're using a tile clip system always give it 12 hours bare minimum to dry before you go removing it okay you are exerting force and like away from the wall as you take these things off you don't want to risk if you didn't have good adhesion and the cement isn't quite cured yet right so just give it the time don't be in a hurry all right it's not going to kill you to leave this project and go to do something else and come back to this the next day anyway now is the moment you're all been waiting for you want to know how do we get rid of these clips well there's two ways one is with the rubber mallet let me demonstrate that way first remember the way that this works is the clip is this way behind the tile so to break that joint you got to go the opposite direction leave the yellow thing in there it's actually part of your friend here oh done [Music] the reason you're using a rubber mallet is because you don't want to mess up your tile right this won't destroy the glaze and it's like asmr really it's like therapeutic or if you don't want to go and buy a rubber mallet you can always use a tape measure that works too because it's got rubber edges on it and it's not gonna mark the tile so now we're gonna see if i know what i'm doing and if i continue to work clean every single one of these should break out without leaving a tab behind now you remember we used a different system earlier in the tile just use these little squares see that there's a lot of compression on this type of thing you can't just pull it off with your finger dang nabit now you can decide which system you'd rather use all of these uh little yellow wedges here they're perfectly useful again so the next time you have a tile project all you got to do is go out and buy more of the clips and you can reuse these wedges over and over and over and over again so it actually becomes a lot more affordable than you thought now the next time you do a major tile project you only got to buy 10 of the wedges you're right back in bed all right guys so i'm at the store the other day and i'm looking at all the different groups and i was amazed to see that they're selling pre-mixed grout in this little bucket that's about this big it's 30 bucks so this box right here costs 20 and i'll be honest with you it makes uh four times as much credit so if you're only doing one tile project in your entire life then maybe it makes sense get the pre-mix i've never worked with it i have no interest in knowing i just don't see the logic in buying something that's been sitting in a tub on a shelf for months at a time just to expose it to the air and then it's going to be anyway enough i've said um when you're mixing unsanded grout it's incredibly sensitive if you ever make pancake batter you'd know like most guys who watch this channel you know your cooking skills are probably at least you make pancakes once in a while so it's just a little bit of water and that's a lot that'll probably make enough grout for the whole whoa okay and since you probably are not very proficient i would suggest starting off with three parts powder one part water okay and you'll see what happens here we're gonna mix on slow [Music] no that's still pretty soupy i like a little stiffer than that so now what we do is we just work with like a little bit of a handful at a time and if i gotta add a little bit more water what i'll end up doing so take my sponge right and i'll just go like that because that's a lot of water when you're mixing grit i know it's crazy but remember we have a 1 16th grab line not a whole lot of product needed for this job [Music] clean the tool now the reason that i'm a big fan of mixing your own grout hey it's more economical but b if you've ever been to a big box store you always see that lineup of people there that are doing returns what you don't want is to have an experience where you've got a temperature sensitive material from a northern climate that froze during the winter and was returned in the spring because that happens that'll ruin your whole job okay what you'll end up with is you'll start working with it and it just won't cure if you've ever seen the comments section in these videos you'll see people go you know i tried that pre-mixed great it just wouldn't dry that's because it was frozen once changed the chemical composition now you're screwed because you got to wash all that out and then go about buy more of it now if you live in the south you're going to get frozen grout so no big deal but if you live in the north grout and silicone i just don't like buying pre-mixed like silicone is dangerous i'll always open up a new box in the back of the shelf i just don't trust the stores or the return policy why they allow people to return sensitive weather sensitive materials to those stores in the first place is beyond me i once had a job where the company i was working for this is years ago they actually supplied me with a silicone that had been in a bin in the shed well they had a storage facility but it had been frozen so i finished this massive elaborate bathroom pulled out this clear silicone installed all the custom glass did the rest of it taped it up secured it came back the next day it didn't set this was a massive project and for seven dollars the client was outraged right seven dollars just not worth it i'm telling you right now what you're going to need is a grub float this is massive by the way this is for like doing an entire floor but it's here and it's clean so i'm going to use it there's not much to this like let me just say for the purpose of the video you should always wash your tile first oh just in case there's a little smudge here a little smudge there yeah i know i'm going with a bone colored grout which is a brown and so my cement isn't brown i actually had a little bit squeeze out there so what you do is you just force that rag in there back and forth a few times if you're working on your tile the next day the cement will actually dissolve in the water and you can wipe it out if you leave it for 48 hours though you got to use a tool to clean all right so if you ever put on tile on a wall always clean it the next day make sure it's in your plan to clean it the next day because anything else can be disastrous it's really hard to see this on camera so i'll take it off first now use wood and shim for this if you have a um a plastic spatula or something to work too you can see that eh okay that's a wax coating usually comes off a hell of a lot easier than that holy cow this here it's on all four corners of the tile when they put the tile in the box they put back to front back to front and so in the assembly line they actually have this protective wax applied to the face of the tile okay so that the stone in the box during shipping and all the vibration and wiggling around isn't in contact with the glaze it's just a millimeter but it does the job and it protects the stone during shipping okay if it doesn't have something like this they'll pack it glaze to glaze back to back but this is the most common way to do it when you're buying something that's quality all right so i'll go get the rest of this off and then we can grout ah there we go all right this stuff is uh thick like peanut butter okay it's any runnier than that you're in trouble generally because when you wash the tile there's always a little water left behind it helps make the application easier so you don't want to have grout that's already runny because as it picks up the water it gets runnier now you want to grout right in up against that plastic edge there okay it's always going to be a little bit of a bead so make sure you do that once it's on the wall you take the side clean it you got a nice ridge you can force it in the top grout floats have two different corners on them one is rounded one is square inside corners like this you want to use the rounded you want it to actually go in convex okay and then after while it's drying it might shrink up a little bit but that's fine at least it'll still be full and the goal here is to get a nice clean line that i can actually um apply some clear silicone to afterwards okay and that's it now and that sets up and it's going to look quite pretty yay and i'll probably have to make a second batch just because this gap up here is so huge it's going to take a lot of this away one of the benefits of uh having a lot of diy skills is when you do something like this if you don't like how much grip you see up there before you put the silicone on you can always come back and apply more drywall compound okay you can actually lower the ceiling to create a straight line which is what i'm going to do ah my wife hates it when the joints at the ceiling aren't consistent happy wife happy life eh now i want to clear one thing up because uh i see a lot of examples on the internet especially on youtube people will do grouting jobs right they're going to show you to use this on a 45 degree angle right to have the trowel open 45 but the truth is about the 45 it's not just the tool it's the direction you attack the grout line if you come straight across you're going to trap air okay so you want to start like this and always on a on an angle across the joint go in two different directions if you need to once it's full then you can run across and clean it out makes sense you can't just have the tool in 45 you actually got to apply it under 45. you want to ridge that in that motion forces the grout nice and deep into the gap okay and that'll give you a really good performance there's nothing worse than finishing off a growth job and then after it's drying little air bubbles appear because all you got was a bit of grout on the surface because you trapped air right so this is how you avoid that [Music] boy it's nice and hot up here on the ladder in the summertime eh even with the air conditioning okay so for anybody out there who's confused why is jeff using poly blend from home depot um it was convenience like i told you before home depot's just like a convenience store and sometimes it's just convenient to go there right my favorite store is on the other side of town from where i live i wasn't driving all the way across town just to get my favorite grout so that one has a polymer modified grout application as well so it's similar to the one i told you not to use in my other video we'll link that in the video description but because i'm dealing with cold water um with my washing and with my mix and there's not a lot of product here i'm more than confident i can wash this before it sets up i'm going ahead with it uh but if you're a first timer watch that video and then you can decide for yourself if you think it's worth it to use this polymer modified stuff has its advantages but my goodness if it's a hot day outside you know you could be in a lot of trouble which is why i'm starting up here first because it's a lot warmer near the ceiling in the summertime in canada even with air conditioning right so you just don't want to let this stuff get ahead of you look at that it's already working out great so the first step here is just to polish it in get rid of the excess all right having excess grout on the tile if it dries is a real problem so now i've worked it i know i've got a few minutes so now i'm clean i'm gonna keep that convex curve with my finger and just get a nice grout line pretty pretty pretty pretty all right now when we're washing we're gonna wash down we're gonna flip the sponge over and white one more time don't touch it again okay it's a damp rag not one that's dripping and you set it and forget it okay whatever's left on the glossy tile after that process we'll wipe off later on okay it's gonna be such a watered down version of whatever is on there it's not worth trying to polish it off okay let it all dry up you can come back with a rag later and wipe it off haze is just haze unless it's epoxy and it's not haze it's still epoxy that's the whole washing cycle right there okay contrary to the grout line all right now we're in a situation here where we got opposing ground lines all you need to know here is you wipe it off the same way you applied it okay on a 45 done piece of cake why is it every time i grow i explain how to do it like gordon ramsay makes a burger bun on lettuce on here we go so i'm just going to do the next section polish it and be careful when you're polishing because you should be using a grout that's very similar in color to the actual stone an area like this you want to make sure oh okay that's the stone fine i don't have any residue if it's hot um resist the temptation to use a fan if you're using polymer i know it'll feel more comfortable but all you're going to do is set everything up all that much faster sometimes it's just safer to sweat than it is to be comfortable now we'll go to the top on the other side you want to wash in the same way that you applied it so that you have the same drying time try to keep things consistent here we are nice when i put the sponge in the water i'm actually squeezing it forcing the sponge to excrete and fill back up with water again get as much of this out of the product out of the sponge as you can if when you're wiping you see a lot of residue left behind it's time to change your water okay you don't want to do more than 50 or 60 square feet of any kind of product without changing the water all right wax on wax off here we go okay now guys listen just real quick i know there's a lot of people out there showing you how to do custom carpentry design elements future walls but listen here's the deal the amount of tools it takes to do really good custom carpentry you're probably looking at three to four thousand dollars in tools to do a good job to be able to tile like a pro will cost you about 150 bucks i'm just saying if you take a look at the investment until maybe 200. but if the investment of tools and then the skill set is can you apply mud to two surfaces and stick them together and use clips to make it perfect anybody in the world can make a feature wall with whatever pattern or size tile or texture or gloss the options are endless just go to the local tile store take a browse you can be blown away geometric shapes no problem you want linen texture no problem you want things that look like wood or things that look like stone whatever you want to get they if all of this at the tile store the applications are always the same go with the skinny grout line a little bit of blood sweat and tears you can have a gorgeous feature well for just a fraction of the cost of the tools it takes to learn how to do carpentry just saying this tile here pretty sure it was running around seven bucks a square foot okay so it's expensive but what have i got eight by eight 64 square feet right so 64 times seven four five five tools seven hundred dollars all in tools and material you can do a feature while at home for seven hundred dollars you can buy a decent chop saw so that you can do carpentry in a bedroom wall but for same 700 bucks you can make a feature well come on this is the way of the future learn how to tile and then you've got a skill set that you can use to apply to every other renovation in your home start on a feature wall gain some confidence then tackle your bathroom project okay don't do your bathroom until you've had some experience this is a great place to start not a lot of cutting but all the basic skills are right here and when you're done you've got something amazing to put your bed up against that is money in the bank now we're going to show you that after project there's not much left to do here i'm going to do a little bit of touch-ups you can see over here now that i'm done growing i'm going to pull these out i'm going to wipe this up i'm going to get some drywall compound i'm going to fill the wall up to the plastics i'm going to level off that edge up there with some drywall compound it's going to be amazing we're going to show you the after projects when it's all done and all painted and all the baseboards installed i hope you enjoyed this project remember you're your best contractor and you can do this yourself now that's a feature wall right and remember this when you go to the tile store there's so many options out there any wall in your home can be a feature wall you can do a hallway and have great texture you can do the living room or the kitchen around fireplaces anywhere that you have a wall you can throw tile and now you know how to do it you can upgrade your home and maximize its value have a lot of fun with it now click over here and you can watch a ton of other videos don't forget to like the video and put your questions in the comment section cheers until next time

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 96,460

Keywords: Home Renovision DIY, Build an incredible accent wall on a budget, Accent wall DIY tutorial, how to make an accent wall, how to paint an accent wall, how to tile an accent wall, DIY accent wall, where to put an accent wall, accent wall ideas DIY, Bedroom accent wall, living room accent wall, what color to make accent wall, feature wall, how to make a feature wall, how to use grout, how to tile, tile DIY tutorial, grout DIY tutorial, how to finish tile tutorial, Jeff Thorman

Id: 6rlK0Sc5n_E

Length: 62min 46sec (3766 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021