How to Install a Subway Tile Back splash

in this video I'm gonna teach you how to install a subway tile as a kitchen backsplash now I know a lot of you think this might be an easy task but I got a lot of tips and tricks that are going to help make this job flawless and look perfect alright so kitchen backsplash is they're generally the basic home do-it-yourself kind of tile project right and everybody can install 20 square feet of tile or can you here's the trick this is a three by six subway tile traditionally subway tile is 50% offset so you get a nice little stagger you generally think that you'd start at the bottom and then you work your way up now for argument's sake here this wall is going to be its minimalist kitchen so it's open-concept it's just gonna be some floating shelves so we're gonna tile right to the ceiling which makes my project simple but generally the upper cabinets are sitting at 18 inches which is this mark here and they make these tiles so that if you put them on the wall they pretty much finished right a full room okay so there are a lot of tiles out there there if you're gonna buy them double check the size do the math from 18 inches and you'll find that in a lot of those cases they won't go install without any cuts that makes your life simple but what you they aren't gonna tell you is that most kitchens aren't installed level so every countertop section is going to be leveled independently of itself most guys don't install kitchens and throw a laser on the wall and then make sure the whole room is all the same height so if you start in one corner start working away around the room you'll find you'll go behind a stove you get to the other side all of a sudden you'll be doing all these ugly cuts and it's a disaster so what I do is I generally start on a wall like this I'll put one tile on this side one tile on the other side and then I'll throw the laser level on the other corner I make sure that my laser level is always set a little bit higher than the tile that's completely in the picture if the other tile has got a laser line like that that's fine I'm not worried about it because I can always come and do a little bit of grinding off the bottom and fit this row in so that it has the appearance of a full tile because when I'm done don't forget I'm gonna be using a thin line of silicone here so after grout and silicon the I will never pick up if the tile has got a little bit of a grind cut to it but if you try to just install it on the flat surface and assume it's level your tile will start going like this you're gonna get bunched for space your grout lines will be a disaster and that can be seen from a mile away so the basic tools of this job and when you're dealing with a backsplash you're not and you're dealing with a small tile you have the advantage to continue as an adhesive now this is a type one adhesive from a PI it's designed for wet areas so I usually buy this in a big bucket because blue or not I still end up doing some situations where we're tiling showers for people who aren't using waterproofing systems just because the code doesn't require it and some people's budget just don't allow it so I'll buy a big bucket like this and that's wonderful I buy myself a cheap little trowel like this because I find this adhesive especially if you're doing this at home you're gonna do one side of your kitchen the other in a couple of days it doesn't clean off very well with soap and water you have to use a knife to cut the glue off and after two or three tries I generally just throw this in the garbage and go for another one so I got tired of spending 20 or 30 dollars on a good one so I just use these ones there's a available to hardware store I think - like 4 bucks not a big deal so this adhesive is pre-mixed all right and so you're just gonna scoop it up nope just throw it on the wall and you can see it sticks generally speaking less is more here it's kind of like glue so you really want to trowel exactly lay it on and then run it off ok so that's the basics behind how to get the glue on the other things you're going to need for the tile job of this sort of course measuring tape you don't want a knife so you can open your spacer bag these things here are 1/8 inch rubber spacers depending on your tile this one does not have any ridges on the backside of the tile if it did when you put them together they would have a built-in grid line but it doesn't so it collapses so what I have to do is I have to put a spacer and every one of these tiles to make sure I can grout it later I also want to have a magic marker this is a glossy tile that makes a great mark and because it's glossy it won't be permanent if you try to do this with a pencil here's a pencil doesn't really show up okay you don't want to be sitting here fussing around with the tile all day long you want to just make your mark and go all right so get these markers I think I think these Milwaukee sharpies are available pretty much everywhere nowadays the next thing you need is your trusty little tile cutter make sure that the cutting wheel on there is in good condition if it's not check the handle in a lot of cases there's another cutting wheel laying in there it's a gift from the tile store a lot of people don't know that there's another wheel you just change the then not here right at the bottom and boom you got a brand new tile cutter so that's available if you need it and you need a drill with a Philips pit because all of your wall plugs have to be removed now if this kind of thing makes you nervous working with live power then by all means there's our kitchen plug is just go down to the panel this should be labeled and just turn all the breakers off okay and in this jobs this is new construction I actually already asked my electrician to change out the screws and put in nice and long ones for me so that when I'm done I can install this over the tile and still connect to the box and so he was happy to help me out with that okay so when you get started on a tile job like this you have two options you can start in the middle and work left and right for me that's maddening when I'm working with adhesive because then you're always having to clean it off and your work surface starts to get bigger and bigger and bigger and the glue is drying as it sits there so you're over here tiling on the third row and you got to go over there and then do the fourth fifth to sixth seventh eighth ninth and then start over here at the bottom again I Drive you insane so what I try to do is start on the side advantage a new build is I built it so the walls level so that means before I get started since I'm doing a 50% offset I can just measure and Mark my tiles this isn't actual 5 and 7/8 lovely so that's 2 in 9 60s I know my tile cutter so I'm gonna put a mark here and that'll be my half tile i'll just confirm that i got that right scratch creak that's pretty darn close all right so we'll just line that up again this time here we go all right now I'm gonna have 20 some-odd rose so these tools work really quite easy um if you're starting out and you haven't done much of this before push it up against a wall all right that'll give you a little bit of and you're not looking for a lot of pressure here just a quick scratch it's called the scratch 2 will not a cutting tool you really want to just touch the wheel on the edge roll it up over and then push it along and the wheel doesn't really roll as much as it scratches through the glaze so when you add the pressure the breaks nice and clean relatively speaking all right that gets us started we're gonna keep this out of trouble for a little while with this out of our way so max just asked me why do they call it subway tile and I was like well it's because of those old subway stations that's how they cover all their walls you remember the subway stations they used to be hand dug not machine dug so the walls weren't all straight and then they didn't have steel supports everything was curved and so these tiles are designed to take on all kinds of different movement because they're so small you can wrap them around bends and all kinds of great stuff well that's why they use these just for their practicality in there so I made my mark there for my laser line and I've just thrown a couple screws and some metal transition here it's just a straight edge and I'm just gonna build on this generally the glue holds everything just fine but because I'm using spacers and I'm going to the way I'm gonna do this is I'm gonna put a bunch on the wall and then add some spacers and then push it all back together again okay so there will be some pressure on the bottom row so I just put that there to keep everything from sliding around no really I find it easier to put the glue on from the bottom same as when I'm grouting a wall in a bathroom okay and then you can take the time pull it across following all your voice fill them in and then very similar to drywall just put a bit of a turn on your your trowel and it keeps it all from running out the back side it won't have big globs of it land everywhere hey that's a lot and then we're gonna just kind of anticipate our spaces for now there's no back butter on this because it's a subway tile and adhesive and that v-notch gives me perfect adhesion I'm gonna do is just kind of guess for my Crouch paces to start with if you do one tile at a time and then add your own space you're okay will drive you insane and it'll take forever I'd like to just do this get a few rows on start it up the tile and push up so you're always cleaning the glue out of the way go tight and then go up to the side okay try to keep yourself clean as you go if you're clean your job will be clean if you start getting covered in heat so just take a minute and get rid of it I'll be everywhere and then you'll spend all kinds of time trying to clean your table okay it's about as far as I want to go these spacers are rubber which makes them very easy to work with easy to pull out which is an important aspect of this too easy to pull out sometimes with a small little wall tile if you're using rigid plastic spacers you can't grab them with a pair of pliers and yank them out sometimes they get stuck right in there with the compression you can see what I mean just having a bunch in your hand and then running along to all these different joints move this process along open it close it okay [Music] and you won't of course put one at the end of each piece of tile and this seems a little bit monotonous the reality is it gets a great look right this is visual effect having as much texture very common way to finish a wall like this nowadays is actually to use a contrasting grout color so this client has got new gray flooring concrete countertops so we're going to be finishing this job using a really light gray on the grout so they'll be a contrast which is why these spacers are so necessary if I was just going with a white grout I might be able to just cheap I got enough experience for this sort of thing I could probably just put all these tiles on the wall stand back align them all the way I want and not even use the spacers grout it the next day and no one would ever be any wiser but if you're using a contrasting grout color no no you got to deal with the level of precision that just you need to use your spacers there's no way you can cheat so we've got our tile up to the point now where I'm dealing with the electrical plug no I'm not gonna go any higher than this for now I want to try to finish this this size of a spread all the way across the wall and then we'll come back and start the roll over again that way I'm always working where the adhesive is wet and I don't have it at drying out on me so the way you do this is really simple you just put this bad boy back in the box and you put this tile on your edge now if the hole where the screw in this plate is above the this rim then you're fine and that's what we are we are fine now you don't want to get in here with the trowel messing around just put the ISA right onto the tile okay make sure you've got good coverage here because there's gonna be compression with the electrical slide it in behind then push it to the wall all right that way you're not going to accidentally park and blow something up including your finger when it comes time for a cuts around the flood line your tile up with the hole in the wall not on the plug itself you want to maintain the gap on the box okay and then mark your grout line so that you keep that consistent all right I might take a little practice for you to know where exactly that blade is going to cut I actually put a little black mark on my cutter so I have an idea so I was lining up like that perfect okay and again we'll just step all this back up here keep working in the use of while it's still wet this type one adhesive generally has a setting time of about ten minutes so if you can't get it done in 10 minutes scrape it off put it back in the bucket that way at least it's staying with the rest of the moisture and won't dry out and on his own okay no we're here I don't want to be putting all the adhesive on every tile as I go I'm gonna make sure it's nice and clean between the between the stone okay keep that there for when we're ready no secret here is maintaining your line what you have to do is measure two and 1560s there we are that makes more sense put it on the wall and put it right on the grout line okay that is your space end the discussion get that on I know what you want to do have yourself a cover plate handy put it on your plug and put that back in position and see if it covers again if it does you're gonna be fine if it doesn't you'll have to add a sliver I found that generally speaking any gap between the tile on the box that's a quarter-inch you're fine 3/8 you run into an area where you might want to buy a different size plate you can actually buy the medium or the large size the king plates if you do buy one for every every electrical plug in your kitchen or it'll look funny now we check this one we're definitely gonna have to grind it so here's what we do we want to hover knowing that this area here all right that's all I have to take out now I have options for this if you're good with the tile scissors you can use your nips you can nip that out because this is a ceramic it's easy to work with or if you like me you always keep your grinder handy so basically [Music] when the grinder wheel stops moving then you can let go you learn that one the hard way all right there we go boom tayo huh feel like Gordon Ramsay so here we go wherever you can get a space rent at the end of each tile alright especially around your plug cuts it's a lot of times when there's a problem with the your tile later on it's because somebody got this area wrong once we get all these spacers in we're gonna just back up and bend over and have a good visual look make sure that it all makes sense just gotta move quick here because my stuff is drying on the wall subway tile always makes me think about the first time I've ever tiled the bathroom it was my own house and I was young married had two little babies and I was living in a rental and the place was a dive I was broke working in an Italian kitchen trying to be an apprentice chef till of course one day I found out that they worked every night every weekend every holiday and they don't get early any money so I changed careers anyway I was working in this Italian kitchen and figures the Italian chef was also a tile set and so he gave me a crash course well in the kitchen one day and let me borrow a couple of his tools and I did my first subway tile job all by myself off of a conversation I had with the guy in the kitchen no YouTube back in those days and it wasn't bad wasn't bad it'd have been a lot better and here we go that's pretty much all the information you need for doing a backsplash one quick note the reason I use garbage bags to cover my countertops is because most tarps that you buy are at least four feet wide and I don't like to have a bunch of them on the countertop then there's too much weight they're always falling off this is quick and simple you can get glue all over it and at the end of the day just roll it up and all the garbage is gone and there's nothing to clean so this is why I use garbage bags other than that this process we're gonna go right to the ceiling so it's just over and over and over again so just remember get a straight edge to keep a laser level straight and then you can build and not gonna have any issues so this is a perfect DIY project subway tile it's clean simple lots of cool designs out there so check your building stores you can get them with different details on the edges and kind of like a golf ball scalloped look there's a lot of cool little things so lots of options you can also go with the soldier row and then do angles herringbone these are easy to work with okay same applications lots of glue use the spacers and you can do anything you can dream up so if you like this kind of video hey subscribe don't forget to hit the blue button down there like the video for real these kinds of things are real important to us so we know what to bring it and if you have problems navigating all these videos on our YouTube channel then you can always check out our website there's a link in the description below we put together a platform so that you can find exactly what you're looking for related topics and all that sort of thing so if we're as information that we didn't get for you in this video that you need above tiling we'll have a series on tiling and then if there's other aspects of the job you need information on it's all there otherwise remember the most expensive part of any home renovation is the labor to get it done so if you can do it yourself go out there and make yourself lots of money you

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 2,460,816

Rating: 4.9409008 out of 5

Keywords: subway tile, kitchen back splash, how to install subway tile, how to tile a backsplash, how to tile, subway tile kitchen backsplash, diy tile backsplash, how to install a subway tile backsplash, diy subway tile backsplash, wall tile installation, ceramic subway tile backplash, backsplash tile installation, backsplash tile, backsplash installation for kitchen, subway tile backsplash installation, subway tile backsplash diy, kitchen backsplash diy, how to tile kitchen backsplash

Id: HIyIGJcJejU

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 24 2018