How To Install Floor Tile | DIY For Beginners

if you have ever wondered if you are going to be capable of tiling a floor yourself or you've hired somebody and you just want to know what the process looks like then this video is going to be great for you hi i'm jeff from home renovation diy and my channel specializes in teaching people the skills that they need so that they can diy their own remodeling and renovations today we're going to be teaching you guys how to tile and we're talking basics okay this is not an advanced course this is for homeowners who want to just be able to have a simple tile project and be successful with it we're going to be talking about why is the floor blue right now jeff this is a little bit bizarre the truth is is that this is sheet vinyl and is glued down to the concrete and that is an acceptable substrate if you use a multi-surface bonding primer on it we're going to leave the science the building science alone in this video because there's multiple different floors and products that you can install tile on that's another whole bottle of wax today is the actual installation how to be successful and tips and tricks so that you don't have a tile failure and have to replace the work down the road after you put all your fixtures in your room and your appliances my goodness there's a lot of disasters that can happen from making simple basic mistakes so today is going to be all that information you need so you don't make those okay now let's just jump right into this and i'll show you how we got this place primed up and then we'll talk about the tools our techniques we've got two different sizes of tile today we're going to show different diagrams how to lay them out how to install the rules for laying tile how temperature and humidity and all of these things affect the installation lots of tips and tricks coming your way enjoy this video cheers so now we've seen how to tile a wood on wood structure uh cement board on wood structure now we're on the concrete floor in the basement of the church and so i actually have a glued down vinyl flooring here and yes it is possible to install tile directly on top of the vinyl glued down flooring not on wood but on concrete you can do it basically you just want to cut off the excess okay anything that's got a ridge it's going to be in the way there's that lovely old flooring all right and you're going to want to sweep this really good grab the vacuum clean all that up okay make sure you go by the dollar store and get a roller buck 50. this is a throwaway this is what you want to use in this scenario this is not time to go get a 10 microfiber this is not a finished paint job okay throw it on your cage grab yourself some of this multi-surface bonding primer we use this in a video where i showed you how to tie all over tile we'll link to that as well it's a great instructional for wall tile today we're dealing with floors now same technology i guess i gotta manhandle this thing i don't know where my opener is yeah okay yeah oh yeah nothing special about this okay once we've swept we're just going to pour some of that out all right use whatever you got andy broomstick these are available home depot for five bucks they threaded its universal size and paint handles okay or you can grab yourself uh the wooster sherlock sticks that i use with my green handle but this is fine this stuff is messy all right don't be in a hurry it'll spray everywhere and you just want to push it around and what this does is this creates a bond between the existing floor and the thin set that we're going to be using to put the cement the tile down all right the rule is kind of like you want about 85 to 90 coverage of your thinset with your substrate so you're gonna have to make sure they get close to the walls all right but no we're going to be leaving a gap for the tile as well so you can go about half an inch from the wall that's fine it's not going to hurt anybody this doesn't have to be precise this is not a moment of picasso brilliance we're just getting this sloppy stuff on here to get the job done okay underneath the cabinets there's never any weight there again not a real big concern all right bonding primer is amazing agent the world of tile you're going to have two options opportunities one is direct pond and that's what we're doing here and that is the cement board or the wood on the wood screw down where you're tiling your tile direct to a surface this is actually an uncoupling membrane system because and that's like ditra right the orange orange mat that's an uncoupling membrane system and there's more than one but that's what this essentially ends up becoming because the tile is now bonded to the surface of this vinyl but the underside of the vinyl is glued to the concrete and because of those different three different layers they can move around a little bit independent of each other so though there's a direct weight transfer onto the concrete this becomes like a cheap homemade uncoupling membrane so you don't have to spend money on schluter dietrich here now if you are on a concrete floor and you've got glue down vinyl like this and your plan is to have tile and transition to hardwood then i would recommend do the bonding primer like this then use the schluter ditra and attach it right on top and that will give you a perfect transition from tile to hardwood if you're using three quarter inch hardwood okay other than that it's not necessary there we go that's simple i'm just going to finish rolling this out we're going to demonstrate today a few different tiles with different sizes different layout options okay because this is a studio i don't care what my floor looks like when i'm finished so we're going to show some square pattern some offset some continuous one-third grout joints different growth sizes um a couple of different group products it's gonna be very in-depth okay we're gonna have a lot of fun so stick with us we'll show you every trick that i got but how to tile on floors so that you can do your project and be successful with yours all right let's just jump through the tools real quick okay what you're going to need before you can start a tile job and i'm going to advise this for everybody is get a laser that does a cross line oops let me turn this on boom boom and there you go the actual intersection okay we'll show you in the video why this is so valuable this laser is from fire core we have a link in our video description you can check this out and get them on amazon very affordable it's not designed to be thrown around and abused but it is great for tile installation it also has the ability to go with another line so you can bring your lyzer your laser designs up on the wall as well so you can go right from the floor to the wall and keep the entire room square okay now that's part of layout because layout is really key knowing the end from the beginning is how you get a nice tile job we're not going to get too in-depth and complicated today because we're going to talk about basic floors but so this is great for basic floors that cross line is the key to a beginner's having great success i'll show you that in a minute you're going to need a mixing blade there's a lot of different blades on the market just go to your local store find out what they're selling and tell them it's for thinset you buy your thinset there as well and so you'll need one of these you'll need a couple of pails we're going to be mixing our thinset in the pails and you're going to want to have one pail of water set aside to put this in after you're done mixing to keep this the thinset from hardening on your blade all right you wash your tools as you go when you're doing tile right not at the end of the week this is the key you're also going to need a slow speed mixer don't use your regular drill okay there's a lot of weight and a lot of power required and you don't want to mix your products too fast thinset and grout need to be mixed at a lower speed than your regular drill can do and it's going to overwork your power tools and kill batteries and maybe even burn out your tool altogether so invests about 100 bucks next whether you're doing 13 by 13 12 by 24 24 by 24 uh six by 48 most tile that goes on installation gets this travel it's a one quarter width and a three inch depth okay so it's one quarter by three eighths by one quarter that's what it's called that's for almost every installation it's very rare we have to go to half inch by half inch travel that's advanced tile technology and today's a simple video so if you're gonna do a basic installation and you're not gonna put in a three by three foot tile this is going to work good for you that's called a margin travel this is how you keep your job clean okay this is a great tool we're going to show you when we're doing the installation why this is so valuable i got basic spacers here today now we're not using a tile leveling clip system in this video and a lot of installations it's not necessary um tile clip installations have taken over the internet there's videos out there all kinds of different colored plastic kits and there are times when they're very valuable most floors you don't need them okay if you can just learn how to apply thinset and have a system for installing tile consistently you're not going to have lipids so we just use this to create the right spacing for beginners so that all your grout lines are consistent alright and of course the sponge clean clean clean clean as you go all right don't leave thinset on the tiles while you're working clean as you go and it'll save your bacon because a lot of basic tile installations are still ceramic or light duty porcelain and you don't want to be using tools to clean grout after the fact clean as you go so you don't get chips and wreck your floor all right you also want to have a level this is aluminum it's very lightweight and this is perfect this will help maintain your level surfaces and you just drag it along as you work to make sure you don't have lippage that's the fancy word lippage for when you have two tiles and one corner is sticking up the industry standard for lippage is 1 8 of an inch i know that doesn't sound like a lot but it really is if it's bigger than that you're out of business all right a lot of guys go with 1 16 of an inch and the tile pros generally on floors if it's more than that is slippage and of course in the comments section today you're going to have every opinion of everybody who's ever laid a tile what i'm trying to tell you is this worked in uh in the industry doing new home construction i've worked as a contract tile installer for years for a flooring company i know what i'm doing i never got kicked off my jobs and there are different levels of perfection for different kinds of installation in different industries out there in new home construction they give you two days to do a thousand square feet 14 different kinds of tile all over the house accent colors and grouting and everything they give you two two and a half days to get the job done and that's your whole week new home construction look very much like this you walk in you don't look at anything you don't measure anything you just walk to the far end you throw thinset down you travel it in and you just start laying tile and whatever the hell happens on that job happens wherever it lands it lands a lot of times there's just no time to be specific to plan ahead you just threw it in okay we weren't checking we didn't have time to check how much thinset we were getting we were getting good bond and it was a disaster okay i lasted in that part of the world for like three weeks i had to leave the job because it was just i couldn't work that way and go to sleep at night flooring company they worked with they expected a higher quality okay it was after the fact there's homeowners they already own the home they're watching the installation happen there's a pickier eye there's a higher expectation when a new homeowner walks in a new home and they see tile as long as they're not tripping over it they're just in awe how pretty their new home is no one even knows if that stuff is going to last it's designed on purpose to go in like lightning and there's less care taken to it you as a homeowner are going to want to take care and get a quality installation so we're going to show you how to do quality work rather simply now let's just jump into this because the first thing i want to teach you is when you go to buy your thinset there's a lot of different qualities in your thinset most installations require a basic um modified thinset runs about twenty dollars fifteen to twenty dollars a bag but i got a trick for you this is 50 pounds of mapei ceramic tile mortar it's a thin set and it comes in a bag like this because somewhere along the way during the shopping process it got punctured and lost a handful of the mortar and it was marked down to seven bucks okay it was right here it was 14.97 now it's seven bucks all right it gives you an idea of the kind of markup that they have at the store where they're willing to sell it for half price because it has a little hole and you lost a handful of ridiculous anytime you're buying thin set check to see if they have a pail or a bag with a bag like this great value okay now i'm going to just go through layout options for you there's a couple of ways to do it we're going to show you both options and then you can pick what works best for you depending on the situation you're dealing with so here's a typical bathroom the layout here is simple the hope is that that is square universal symbol for square right and in a lot of cases you'll see guys come in and the bathroom would be five feet wide the same size as the tub right and they'll buy a tile that's one foot wide and the idea is five tiles will finish the rim and they'll check the width and they'll add a grout line and the grout line will be based on the actual size of the tile because in a lot of cases a 12 by 12 is actually 11 and three quarters by 11 and three quarters or 11 and 7 8 or whatever and so you have to have space along the edge plus grout lines you do the math and you can position this you can fill it up without making cuts along the side that's basic but the trouble with this is the walls are made of two by fours okay and in most rooms the interior section here and then there's a door to the inside right so your tile actually comes across and then it goes into about one and a half inches of the of the wall frame or underneath the door that's supposed to be your transition and really good tilers always finish here with a full tile and they'll cut this and they'll cut every tile along the edges to make that fit and what they do is they measure from here to this point okay do the math based on how many tiles they need plus the grout lines and the actual size of the tile and then they'll do a space and they will start with let's say let's say it works better if they start here with a seven inch cut they'll do a whole row at seven inches just to end up with a full tile okay it's called math laying out a bathroom like that to finish with a full tile that's the professional standard all right what you'll see in a lot of cases is they'll start right at the wall full tiles finish full tiles and they'll buy this one and a half inch piece of marble or corian or some other kind of transition or you'll see homeowners they'll stop here and they'll put a transition right and then the door doesn't really cover properly or you can see the tile from the hallway on the other side of the door all kinds of disasters happen the system is really simple you have about a four and a half inch piece your door is about one and a quarter inches wide okay your flooring transition happens in the middle of underneath the door tile ends hallway starts okay so when the door is closed you only can see one type of flooring if you stop shy over here you're gonna be able to see under the gap and see the hall if you bring it all the way over here you're gonna see both flooring from the other side always looks like junk transition under the door i know we're talking about basic tile installs but this is the stuff that makes or breaks an installation so that you are going to be judged by everyone you know and go you know i mean it's nice and smooth and everything fred but like what the hell was with where you stopped by the door right don't be that guy take the time to map it out you could have a really great big kitchen let's put some uh put a big square here okay let's say this is your kitchen you've got cabinets and appliances all right you've got an island all right this is all going to be tile well this is hardwood let's say okay on both sides where do you start your tile in this situation right and that is this right here you pray to god that this is square you check you measure three you measure four you measure five make sure that's square first that's how you do it okay if if it's three feet up and four feet out and it's five feet point to point then that square you're golden now you can start here because you wanna have full tile here and full tile here and then work into the room that's always the best case scenario if this is a wall and it's not square right then you can start here with a full tile and you get down here and you got a full tile plus a sliver and that always looks stupid right so if your walls aren't square then instead of starting in the corner measure from one side of the room to the other so let's say this is in a perfect world to be 15 feet and you're using 12 by 12 maybe 15 tiles that's perfect but what you end up with is you end up with 15 and 3 inches wow now what you want to do is you want to find the midpoint you want to drop a laser down the middle of that room and you work off that laser in both directions okay and by doing that if you can have a full tile here you measure out the distance and if it's going to give you a sliver then what you do is you start with a full tile in the middle of your laser line and then in both cases instead of a sliver you'll have like two-thirds of a tile all right that's basic 101 of how to do a layout now we're going to check our floor and see what's going to work best for us in this scenario now it's not fair for me because i'm in a studio right i'm going to tile this floor i have no intention of keeping it long-term it's just for the sake of showing you how to tile and i have this invisible line that i get to stop at this vinyl flooring continues on for a long way i'm gonna have a laundry room on the other side of this room i'm gonna stop my tile here for argument's sake we're gonna say that this little picture of a of a grout line is where i'm gonna stop and let's assume that this is hardwood what i'm gonna do is i'm going to measure all the way across the room up to my edge and in this case it's 152 and a half and then i'm going to come over here and do the same thing we're going to find out if this room is somewhat square because i've got a definitive line i'm 153 so that's not all that bad that means i'm out a half an inch over this one two three four five six feet so i know if i'm gonna be out a half an inch first thing i'm doing is i'm thinking okay so that side is shorter than this side which means this isn't square okay so i can't treat this like square so i got to figure out which where's my square until i know where it's square i don't know anything so what i can do is this i can take my laser level pick my function where i have the two lines okay and i can go like this i can put my green line where my hardwood floor is okay right on that grout line there in the middle and i can make sure that this line lines up with my finished flooring and i'm going to use this line okay as my my tile line now just for fun let's check the linoleum see what happens here because this linoleum comes off for printing press and it should be perfect yeah not bad all right now i get the i have the the right to move this anywhere i want and so what i generally like to do is i will measure off the the one consistent cabinet and i'll see if i can have like two feet right so let's take a look when you're doing layout you have to do two things you have to consider square with your lasers and then the materials okay you physically want to lay these out and check it out so here's the tile next to it there's a space i want a bit of a space to the cabinet i'm going to put some kind of trim there later so here we go now i'm going to just create my straight line here again right off my tile okay there we go and that is what my layout is going to look like now now i've got this tech i'm going to take these two tiles the other end of the room and check them there and i'm just checking to see if i've got the same kind of spacing over here to work with now we know that that corner is out of line but the depth to the cabinet is very consistent so right away i'm thinking yeehaw because if i can have that whole line of the kitchen which is completely visible at any day full tile then that means i'm only working in one direction right now i all i have to do now is figure out how do i finish with a full tile right and that's simple so now i know that i can work from this wall going this way or i can work from the green line going this way right and then finish going back hang up but i got to figure out i got to figure out how to to to finish with a full tile down there now i got two options because of my laser line i can actually start tiling down there where my transition is because that's going to hardwood or my other finished flooring so so i actually have the ability because it's the same gap to tile inside this space it's like paint by numbers right this is my space so i'm going to tile these two rows when i get to the end i'm going to cut whatever has to be cut and then i'm going to start down there going left to right finishing those rows off nice and simple that's how you think about layout know where you're going to finish plan ahead measure backwards get a square corner lay your tiles out confirm your design and then start from the square spot and then come into your room if that means you have to tile over two days because you just don't have enough room to work that's fine tile half the room wait till the next day and then tile the rest but the layout is the most important factor of doing this job now that you know how to do a layout let's just erase that from our minds and i'm going to show you proper installation techniques different designs different patterns especially the 12x24s um how to put the thinset down how to get a good bond right and then while i'm doing all that i'll share stories with you about all the different tile failures that i had to go fix from other contractors and what they did wrong okay and help you avoid all those mistakes but first we've got to mix some thinset that's simple the instructions are on the bag it's powder water it's throw in the mixer let's mix it for a while let it stand and then give it another quick mix and as soon as i've got that done we'll start tiling now it's getting cold where i live so i'm mixing in the house it's a studio i'm not going to worry about it i don't recommend mixing in the house if you do wear a mask i know it's like you get exposure you know if you do tiling for the rest of your life whatever you do for your living is going to kill you but you know protect yourself if you're sensitive at all a quick shout out to the guys over at dragon by the way it's my favorite tile supplier store here in ottawa if you're in the area and you're looking for flooring or tile supplies go to dragona they even sell bags that have been opened and they'll throw it in a pail so you get the pale and the cement all for a really good price so hell of a deal if you ask me anyway here we go and this is a messy job because it comes out in clumps of course all right now i've been doing this for so many years i don't even bother to measure anymore you can go ahead and follow the directions on the bag okay basically you're going to be mixing half a bag of cement for every pail that you're working with so you got two loads of it you always start with water first [Music] loving it so [Applause] okay now we have to let this sit for about 10 minutes and then we mix it again the telltale sign here is that when you run your finger through it it kind of holds its shape after about 10 minutes of setting up it should hold its shape so let's wait and see okay here we go so we've got two installation tools and my level is around here somewhere yeah all right here we go beautiful i got my thinset and i got a bucket of water and a sponge and i got my little spacers over here okay so we're going to go two tiles out and so just to remind myself that takes me an inch or so past this line for simplicity i'm going to do um two rows with a square installation and then i'll do one row with the 50 offset installation just to demonstrate the different installations and then you can pick what's nicer for you if you were to hold your tile stack up and put a straight edge on it okay you're going to notice there's some minor variations okay ceramic is like that ceramic tile and that's not bad for variation i've seen some pretty extreme variations because they're different sizes right and you want to put everything in square and square and square your your grout line has to be a little bit bigger you've got to give yourself that room so for instance right here we got 1 8 spacers okay that's a 1 8 of an inch a lot of older tile installations were up to quarter inch grout line okay because the tiles are all such varying sizes the way that you would set it is you throw a four or five down like this right and then you just you'd line up the front edge all the tiles you just line up the front edge and then you got a straight line again and then you do the next one because they're so varying there's no way you could use spacers spacers are only invented once they started making tiles consistently the same size all right so these aren't bad if you're wondering which tile to buy ceramic is the easiest to cut porcelain um if it's cheap porcelain is harder to cut and and is more consistent and really good quality porcelain is bang on you're going to have very much the precision you're looking for so that's more for the tile walls and stuff showers definitely invest in the porcelain if you want precision but if you don't mind thicker grout lines then don't worry about it okay so we're just going to take out a few little blobs of our thinset here try to work clean so you're not kneeling in the cement you don't want to have your handle that you're holding covered in cement okay once you've laid that out it's basically go like this load your trowel and then reach back under your cabinet okay to get thinset all the way to the back so you want to set your trowel and pull it across at the same angle okay the other thing we're looking for is all the grout line all these lines have to be in the same direction we'll just show you real quick something like this okay these lines all the air that's in this gets trapped when you try to collapse the ridges because the proper installation technique is of all the ridges going the same direction all right here's another thing you don't want to get caught don't get caught going oh i don't have enough cement well i'll just lower my angle here and now it looks fine but if you're ridging this everywhere else see what happens you get these little these little air pockets of spaces because there's not enough cement there don't cheat whatever your angle is be consistent all right and then every tile will install the same height all right now rule number two check the back of the tile no one will ever tell you this but a lot of these tiles will have uh an arrow okay because a lot of ceramic tiles are recurring pattern and so they're designed so that if you have an arrow and you always install all the arrows the same direction then the mind won't see the pattern get all confused so let's say there's a big arrow on this tile on the front and you started setting them down and all the arrows are pointing the same direction all of a sudden one tile was laid with the arrow pointing right your brain would go well that's stupid well the design and recurring patterns on some of these tiles are really obvious and so they put arrows in the background in the print so that you can install your tiles facing the right direction so no one can see the reoccurring pattern that's good to know now you just set it drop it that is not installed okay you have to put weight on it and then you have to collapse the ridges by pulling it forward first use your margin trowel clean where the tile is gonna go so that the cement doesn't get squished up between the lines next tile go right up against the other one okay put push back you go like this and you collapse the ridges by pulling in this direction okay boom right there now what you've done is you've set the tile you've collapsed the ridges you've basically done this okay and there should be a perfect bond between the tile and the cement looking like this and the goal here is to get as close to 100 as you can and most floors 85 percent coverage is great so let's take a look see how we did all right i would suggest that is probably somewhere around the 50 to 60 range all right now newsflash fifty to sixty percent tile coverage a new home construction is actually pretty darn good okay i know the whole world is going to be screaming at that concept but the reality is it's good now here let me just show you this one again start square pull it forward now put some downward pressure on that tile and wiggle it you can already see the difference in the height of the tiles right now we're going to see what kind of [Music] contact we have here we can get underneath this thing a lot more suction it's usually a good sign all right that's a lot better okay ah just get that back in where it goes what i'm looking at here right now is an acceptable tile installation and most new host construction [Applause] do your travel and do your next three rows all at the same time now you want to make sure that you got enough cement for the whole tile travel in the same direction here we go tile number one press and collapse the ridges sliding it towards you all right number two press you see when it's tight here and here and you press you're not pushing cement through the gaps okay you're just getting that bond now you're going to collapse while you press with your pressure okay this is how you can make this work really good for you okay [Music] here we go all right um let me do one full row here and then we'll show you some 50 offset okay okay so now i'm going to just demonstrate um the 50 offset okay and then the brick pattern i'll show you the difference with this tile [Music] okay here we go so 50 offset okay [Music] mine 50 offset is this um that's six and three quarters and six and three quarters okay and then collapse it until it's in the middle what you can do is you can take the measurement of your tile these are 13 and a half so that's yeah that's exactly six and three quarters that's your middle line and so you can line it up in your grout okay so we're taking the the first tile of the row and putting a tile a mark on it for the center line that just makes it real easy to set up success okay again as you go wash as you go set pressure pull towards you create grout lines that's what 50 offset looks like the next pattern that you might want to use with a 13 by 13 is more of what i call a brick pattern take your tile measure it's 13 and a half uh you're gonna do this one in thirds this time okay so four times three is twelve plus an inch and a half so we're gonna go with four and a half is our line okay we'll set that one down and then we're gonna pull it back all right same thing clean your edge this tile work is very repetitive right now about this time the comment section is blowing up with people going how come you haven't back buttered the truth of it is that in the world of title installation yeah there are better procedures than what you're watching right now and we're going to show that in just a second but this is what almost every new home floor installation looks like i mentioned a couple stories then we're going to jump into the 12 by 24 but right there you've got the standards right a standard square pattern a standard 50 percent a standard brick one-thirds okay uh things that can go wrong one uh we live in a foreign season climate here so in a lot of cases guys will go and buy this tile they'll stick it on their truck drive it to a job site it's freezing cold outside right and then they're working in like a front hall or somewhere off the kitchen off the main floor they're in and out using their sods and their tools and the house cools down and the tile never really warms up it doesn't climatize to the room they're working in so the tile has actually changed size and the tiles that are on a big skid and the ones on the outside are colder than the ones in the middle and depending on what happens with the unloading and you can have two very distinctly different temperature boxes to tile and you're working along and all of a sudden the tiles you're working with are too big or they're too small and everybody panics it's just not climatized the other thing that happens is when this back of this tile when it's cold the thinset doesn't bond to it very well okay it almost gets shocked and it gets like a layer of moisture condensation happens you'll have warm thinset in the house with a cold tile and then it's like microscopic but there's like a thin set condensation instantly happens there and so the thinset doesn't bond and these just pop off so if you've got tiles popping off like full tiles it's because there's no bond even though if they could set it they could collapse bridges if it's cold nothing's bonding to this it'll just pop right off later also seen situations where we're installing tile and we have a wood subfloor okay so we'll have osb half inch subfloor and and that's good because then you get your inch and an eighth thickness which is up to code but then what will happen is someone will come along and they'll be putting all their wood in and then the next day someone will come in and sand all the drywall well the thai guy is not paid to sweep the floors project manager lets somebody come in and then tile right over top of that mess tile guy doesn't care he's getting paid he puts the tile down now the cement that's on the back side of these trucks this tile is sitting on a surface covered in dust what do you think this is bonded to the dust again cracks pops lifts so the rules of tile are basic and simple climatize your product which doesn't happen in 90 of the situations okay the product gets picked up delivered and installed the same day mistake number one so a good renovator will know better but a lot of installers don't follow that rule um make sure that you're clean and dry climatized right and then the only other thing that you can do to possibly screw up a tile installation is to make sure that people stay off it for another whole day how many times i've come home i've come to the job the next day the grout and the tile that was like this is now sitting like this and you're like i didn't install that and the homeowner's like well when i ever stepped on it we never stepped on it and i'm like yeah hell you didn't right like what are you gonna do you gotta bust the tile out you gotta fix it you gotta install another one and then you gotta wait another day to come back and grout have control over the job so if you're working at home and you're tiling always have your butt facing the door while you work okay so you do a room and you finish at the door you close the door you lock it you put blue tape up i don't care what you got to do you know like set a bear trap whatever it is you know keep them off your tile all right now let's get away from this 13 by 13 business and let's get into some 12x24s we'll show you the difference and i'll show you some advanced techniques for installing tiles so that you don't have issues with this kind of 50 adhesion now they all start off the same eh lots of thinset now listen there are other tools you can buy they make this a little faster um there's great big bucket scoops that you can pick up or if you like you can get different cements this is a fairly basic thinset it's a modified thinset so it's got a little bit of latex in it and it also has a lot of sand so it's very thin and loose and not my favorite but it was sure cheap and i love a good deal the other options of course is like ultralight um by mapei as well and that one is more like a whipped cream it's really easy to work with it's a more pricier brand but you get what you pay for so the more difficult there's a situation that you're tiling don't be afraid to spend good money on cement you can get it up to 65 80 a bag and sometimes the technology is worth it depending what you're dealing with if you've got questions about that you can always join our membership program and hit me up and say hey here's the room show me a picture this is the tile this is the situation this is where i live right and then we can help you to navigate a proper assembly situation for yourself all right here we go so we're going to get our thinset laid out here all right no sense wasting any time here we are this is called directional troweling yeah i know leave it up there guys come up with a technical term for putting cement on the floor ah it's funny because if you use the right turn everybody thinks you're an expert okay now my next favorite term i love this term i hate it it's something that the home and garden television channel started using years ago they had contractors and they started using the term back butter back when 13 by 13 was a big stone and then they moved to these right all of a sudden now we have back butter and it's basically this i'm going to double check here on this tile and see if they're straight yeah not bad okay that's not bad all right now what you're gonna find in the industry is um there's a lot of tile out there that's like thin and long like they look like wood six by 42s or something instead of being straight they actually have a bow okay and when you set it down they all have a hump and so different products have different recommendations for installation as to the grout line spacing and you need to know this because some grout lines uh they only let you do the offset tile by by six inches or by twenty percent or whatever so always check with the tile especially if you're a tradesman and someone says oh can you get this tile for me it's pretty and then you come to the job site and the tile recommendation is this much spacing for a reason and they say no i don't want to do that i want to do it stacked which means every tile's right in front of the other and they all have a bump that works or they go oh i went 50 offset wait a minute then i got a hump and then i got a grout line here with another hump every corner is going to have lippage so you got to make sure that if you're in the trades your customers understand that tiles have limitations and you can't just say this is the one i want and this is how i want it done there are things that you're going to be stuck with following but here's go back butter you turn the trowel around now you're more of a dry waller okay put a little bit of thinset on there all right and you just put a skim coat on now for most guys that's good enough especially if you're in production situations but as a homeowner get good 90 coverage or more okay no reason not to all right and then you go throw that in okay all right done now i didn't put too much pressure on that because i want to lift it up i want to check the coverage on this because hey it's the same thinset it's a bigger tile it's a concrete floor but we back buttered so you think we should have much better contact let's have a look right and so when i show this to people they go well that's great coverage all right but take a good hard look at what you're looking at these peaks are actually where the coverage is okay just because you got this cement on everywhere doesn't mean it's actual coverage because that's a valley that's a valley that's a valley that's a valley there's no contact there with the floor so even when you back butter in most cases even though the tile is covered in cement the actual bond you have with the floor it's gonna be a lot less okay there's this one guy on the internet he did that tile video he he pressed a piece of glass into some really wet thinset to show you how to collapse the ridges it's just like okay first of all [Music] there's no such thing as tile made of sheets of glass like that so you can see how you're setting as you go we don't see underneath so that was a cute demonstration it has like lots of views and i get the concept but the reality of it is all you can do when you're working is trust your installation procedure you're not picking up every tile as you go and checking the back check it when you make your cement okay check it once every half an hour or so because it'll start to dry you want to make sure that you're you're still getting good bonds okay but outside of that [Music] like that's all you can do right that's all you can do push down collapse the ridge and then walk away okay ah let's do some stack because 12 by 24 is actually really good if you want to stack it now you'll see this in a lot of showers too people love to do stacked tile in the shower okay stack tile and shower looks like this there's no offset okay press it down pull it forward clean your cement off the side okay there we go now you'll see let me show you this right now they're all pretty level right let's show you the difference of not back butter all right this is a great example set it down we pull it forward okay let's get my level to show you now i don't know if you can see it but my trowel is going right underneath that gap that's a pretty significant gap underneath there and that's what ends up happening because now we've changed the assembly by not doing back butter now just out of curiosity let's pull this one off see how it looks [Music] not a whole lot different except in the middle there is no bond that's almost hardly anything right so that's what this is for all right let me just clean this mess up and we'll show you what a good stack stone installation looks like all right here we go this is what call cleaners go quick little trick here if you've got cement in between the grout lines push your tiles together wipe it out okay sponge the area and then pull them apart and it instantly creates a void in a grout line somewhere the grout can fill okay nice and quick but this is what stacked stone looks like that's the design all right and as long as the tiles are all the same size it works great but like i said if you're buying a case and you're not sure stand them all on in and double check because if they're all a different size it's a nightmare doing stacktile and you'll drive yourself crazy okay just to be sure i always recommend go to a tile store to buy your tile from all right and i'll tell you why because tile stores have people work in there who have access to the data sheet on the tile that they're selling and there's information that's available that you don't get anywhere else like not every tile is designed to be installed in the shower did you know that that ought to blow your mind what jeff did you just say yep there's lots of tiles out there that actually don't meet the criteria to install in a shower because they have mosaic patterns and they have water-based adhesives on the mesh that's on the back and you can install that in wet areas so you can find out all that information when you go to a tile store that's you know professional and they specialize in selling tile they'll tell you what your limitations are for your grout pattern and your installation patterns and all that kind of fancy stuff all right now what we want to do is go i'm going to show a couple of different grout line installations i have just enough room to get this done so let's do this okay all right try to keep this clean here all right here we go now for the sake of argument i'm not going to back putter anymore it's a real big waste of time because i'm just doing a demonstration on installation patterns that's stacked this is half offset okay this is what we're going to call 25 measuring tape anybody know here we go okay and that's basically six inches on these all right here we go slide it forward all right and the reason i'm showing you this quick in a hurry is i don't waste your time but when i show you a great grouting trick for floors in large spaces okay so your next option with the six inch offset is to go like this okay and it starts to look like a bloody staircase all right and if that's the look that you want then great but here's the other option you have it's funny that i'm actually showing design patterns and laying it all in thin settings just lay it on the ground [Laughter] i get in the habit you know it just gets stuck in it so here's the other option okay you went six inches one way you come back six inches the other way okay and i'll show you why this is so attractive in large spaces okay pencil it's a great cement remover okay all right now right now my grout lines throughout the entire room are like two rows okay okay makes sense so visually speaking you have a six inch piece row and then you have a one and a half foot row and then a six inch row with alternating grout lines and that's why that looks so amazing in a large space this is a lot more pleasant to the eye than just stepping and stepping and stepping and stepping and stepping if you do a kitchen where you just go step step step step step and you've got a 12 by 30 space or something it's going to look like hell don't do that do it this way go over six back six and then when you're standing there and you're looking at it it'll be so pleasing to the eye because it'll still be somewhat stacked in linear instead of instead of looking confused right confusing patterns that just drive the mind nuts and it's not a pleasant room to be in this is easy on the brain staggered over and over step step step step step always looks like help okay so remember you're either on concrete or you're on some sort of wood structure if you're on wood structure um and you have a crawl space directly underneath i submit that the best assembly for you is thinset and then half inch cement board okay i love that assembly and that kind of scenario in that region of the world if you have a basement and you're on wood then going wood osb with plywood is also a great way there's nothing wrong with that it's very normal it's low cost it's easy you don't have to make thin set to get your subfloor done you just got to stand up and screw it down we got a video on that i'll put that in the description if you're on concrete the only enemy that you have is how flat it is you might have to pour floor leveler if you want to get perfection if you're just tiling a basement and you're you're willing to go with the curves this installation here with 12 by 24 works great because this really has the ability because your your your curve is only six inches wide the floor can really be laid out in a bowl with hardly any lippage at all okay so consider that this is a great way to do a floor uh other than that you know you get what you pay for if you have unique situations or or bad weather or just really expensive stone and you want to guarantee you're never gonna have an issue or you're putting your tile under an eighty thousand dollar kitchen cabinet for god's sake spend the eighty dollars a bag on your thin set okay remember we've been laying tile as a society and all over the world for thousands of years but not until 1960 did we change the way that we installed it okay thinset's new in construction it's it's only 60 years old and for the last 20 or 30 years people have just been figuring out how to do it well all right and i'm not kidding we're now at a point where we're feeling more comfortable in the world of construction technology to go bigger and bigger stones and a lot of that has to do with this type of house you have do you have dimensional lumber framing or are you getting um you know engineered eye ijoyce made out of osb and lumber there's so many factors don't take it for granted just because it's big and beautiful you can stick it in your house it's not the case the smaller the tile the more success you're gonna have that's a rule okay the bigger the tile the more you need to know about what's going on in your whole assembly all right so if you want success in your beginner keep small 12 12 12 or 13 13 12 24 and keep your joints staggered like this okay these are the most successful installations you have as an option and they will serve you well okay now we did not put any cutting information in this video and there's a reason for that because this is how to apply it how to be successful with your installation cutting is a different beast and might i suggest as a beginner get your layout get your pattern going do all your full tiles come back the next day and then measure and do all your cuts and here's why you're going to find that's going to slow you down a lot and thinset is only good in the pail for about an hour or hour and a half tops it starts to dry out pretty quick okay and then you're going to be working with a drier compound that won't bond as well and you could run into the next problem as a homeowner and that is your thin set got old and it just don't stick no more and things aren't going to bond so do all the full tiles then come back the next day do all your cuts set them in place okay like put blue tape on them or something but put them in place then go mix your thin set when all your cuts are done come back in and do all your cuts at the same time with fresh thinset so you get a good bond that's how you guarantee a good installation get yourself a pencil so when you set all your tiles and your cuts you can clean the grout or the cement between the lines using a pencil it's made of wood and graphite there's no chance of chipping your tile you don't want to come in the next day and grab something like this these little chips when you go grout the dark spaces are all gone all you're going to see is a chip corner okay so avoid using any metal tools on your tile after you're done when i'm cleaning the cement next to it i'm on an angle and the only contact i'm making is at the bottom of the tile not the top very important so grab yourself a couple pencils have a lot of fun with it playing in the mud is fun all right if you want to learn how to cut tile you can click the link right here we did a great video showing you all the different cutting tools different materials that are going to need what cutting tool and how to get great success in your tile job cheers and have a lot of fun with it we'll see in the next video

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 546,884

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, jeff thorman bathroom, tile floor installation, how to tile a floor, tile floor, large format tile, how to cut tiles, do it yourself, home improvement, tile installation, laying tile, how to grout tile, thinset, how to mix cement, how to lay tiles, tile patterns, bathroom remodel ideas, diy, bathroom renovation, how to remodel a floor, how to tile like a pro, how to grout

Id: d2j9rRp8zjw

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 09 2022