Thursday, March 5

Tile Your Bathroom Yourself

So my husband is in the process of building us a new home on his off hours. That would be after work and the weekends. His latest project was tiling our back entry and half bath.

We got a really good deal on our tile. It was from a gentleman that was liquidating all his old stock. We got it for $1 a square foot. Anyway, while searching for tile and asking some of the professionals how it was done; I found only one website that explained it correctly tileshop.com. They have several good videos and since this one was accurate, I think we will use their directions on Do-It-Yourself Showerpan Installation. The information we based our bathroom floor on was from their Kitchen Installation video.

One the biggest differences is very few put backer board (cement board) down, let alone put a layer of thinset down first and then the backer board. You do not want your floor to move or shift under your tiles; otherwise THEY will shift and move causing cracks or the tile to pop up. We have yet to grout but here are a few pictures of Ian laying ours.

Entrance before! We vacuumed before and after with a shop vac.

Laying the backer board (cement board).

Backer board installed.

Laying tile. He does have thin set between the tiles and the backer board, but at this point he was marking where to cut his tile. Ian used a tile saw he got on sale at Home Depot for $40. He still has tile to install in our bathrooms upstairs and our basement so we figured it would be a fairly good investment.

Before grout. We are having trouble with deciding on a grout color. We'd love suggestions. ;)

1 comment:

The FOUR M's... said...

How fun! I haven't done floor tile yet, but I did just finish tiling/grouting my bathroom -- I'll have to add pictures to my blog soon (I still have to seal the grout and do the caulking, and then I can get the window casings back on). It's been a fun (but BIG) job to do/figure out. It's such a nice feeling to know that you've done it yourself though!