bathroom ceramic tile design

in this video we’re going to share tipson how to tile a bathroom floor if it’s right next to a curbless shower. we’re reallyhappy with how this bathroom floor turned out. whether or not you’ve got a curblessshower or a curbed shower, the tips in this video are going to help you out on your project.for this project we used laticrete’s 4-xlt. it’s a modified thinset mortar. it has reallygood bond strength. it’s important to read the back of the bag and follow the directionsto a tee. so we added the water, and we mixed it, and then we let it slake per the directions.we also used a euro trowel for these 12x24 tiles, and we made sure that our floor wascompletely flat and level. now, in our prior projects and videos we used4-xlt to bond strata_mat to our wood subfloor.

so there’s strata_mat on top of our woodsubfloor. this is going to be an isolation membrane that’ll help our tile not crackover time. and then we waterproofed that using hydro barrier. so make sure to watch our priorvideos. one of the most important things for the curblessshower is to denote where you want your shower entrance to start. so in this case it’s30”. we have out square there. we’re making sure that the first few tiles in the mainbathroom floor area are nice and square with that entrance area. the other thing is we’regoing to offset this pattern by 1/3. so these 12x24s, we’re going to offset them by thirds,and this will help reduce tile lippage in the main bathroom floor area, which is reallyimportant.

so as you can see here, we’re going to dryfit most of these tiles to make sure that our pattern looks good. and we’re goingto finish the tile just underneath the bathroom door. that way the transition won’t lookweird. and we also want to make sure that we don’t have a grout joint as soon as youwalk into the bathroom. our preference is to not have that happen.there was an air vent in the bathroom floor, so we cut that out of our porcelain tile usingthe fein wsg 7 angle grinder and the montolit cgx115 diamond blade for porcelain tile. also,wear a silica dust respirator when doing this. we like the sundstrom dust respirator.we cut away a little of the hydro barrier on top of the floor there. we wiped it downwith a sponge to make it clean. and then we

burned the thinset into the top of the floorwith the flat side of the trowel and then use directional troweling to make sure thatwe had enough thinset on top of the strata_mat for our tile.when you get these tile it’s a good thing to always look at the back and just make surethat they don’t have an arrow indicator—like this one does. these do have arrow indicators,basically meaning that you want to have all the tile facing in that same direction. sowhichever way you want to point tile, just keep them all going in that direction. sothere must be some kind of pattern on the front that they want to have a certain lookto it. so i have all my tile sitting here, all arrows pointing up and basically pointsthem towards the front door. back butter the

back side of the trowel.because this is a wet area, the back of the tiles are back buttered and covered about95% to 100% with thinset mortar. and we’re going to make sure we have our30”. again, i am not concerned about what this wall looks like. i’m more concernedabout staying square with my shower. so i’m just using my square as a straight edge forit and then just making sure that i hold my 30”.we are going to be using that square throughout this project. as you saw, steve wiped awayexcess thinset against the edge of the tile because we are going to be using t-lock clips.and we’re back buttering our large tile and setting it in place.and it’s a good idea to, on a large format

tile, kind of just wiggle this a little bitto collapse those ridges. we are going to use some of these leveling clips. these helpkeep things flush with one another. t-lock also helps eliminate tile lippage,and that’s when one tile’s higher or lower than the other. and the clips have the groutspacer in them. as you could see here, steve is using a little linoleum knife to cleanout those grout joints—super important here in this project. and we’re going to continueto check the edge of this tile that’s meeting up with the interior portion of the showerpan just to make sure that it’s square and 30”. so again, we’re adding our clips.we’re back buttering our tiles with the flat side of the trowel. and then we’resetting that tile and compressing all the

ridges that are on the floor and then addingthe t-lock wedges. when you add the wedges, you still need to make sure that those tilesare clean. also that in this case the tiles are about â¼â€ away from the drywall, andthen we’re getting our measurement. for this project we used basically two cuttingtools: the masterpiuma tile cutter, as you saw there. and we’re getting our measurementhere for the door jam, again leaving about a â¼â€ gap between the tile and the doorjam. the second tool that we are going to use to make this l-cut is an angle grinder.so you saw the angle grinder at the beginning of this tutorial. we’re using it throughout.and again, it’s just the fein wsg 7 with the montolit cgx115 diamond blade, specificallyfor porcelain and ceramic. so you always want

to get that blade up to full speed beforeyou make your cut. and again we’re just leaving our expansion and contraction jointhere between the tile and the door jam. here we’re adding our clips. we used threeclips per elongated side of a 12x24 and two clips for the short side, so the 12” side.so that’s our preference. and then we’re just using our directional troweling here,back buttering, and setting the tile like we did before.you can use your hands or you can use this gun, whichever you need. i find myself beingable to use my fingers pretty easily on here. and again, i’m just using my square. i justreally want this front edge to the shower being nice and square and even. so when iput my mosaic tile here, it’s a nice, straight

line.so as you see here, we’re back buttering again, trying to maintain our 95% to 100%coverage on the bottom of the tile. we’re adding out t-lock. and there is a method tothe t-lock. you definitely want all the wedges to face the same direction if possible. andthe reason why, as you go to compress the wedge, you’re going to be compressing thatgrout joint together and making it nice and tight.so here we are. we’re using the masterpiuma by montolit, and we really like this tool.it’s a little bit more expensive. it’s an investment. but if you can get one, it’sprobably the best tile cutter that you can possibly buy with your money. so there we’rejust making sure that tile actually is flush

with the threshold in the doorway. we actuallyencountered a little bit of a problem with that threshold entrance, but we’ll addressthat later in the video. and as you see here, we’re making the wedges face the same direction.so all the wedges should be facing that same direction so that your grout joint maintainsa consistent spacing throughout the tile setting process.so here we have to make a little moon-shaped cut into the tile using our angle grinder.as you can see here, we’re getting our measurement for the other tile that’s going to be adjacentto the wall. again, we’re making our moon-shaped cut with our angle grinder here. this oneisn’t as severe, so it’s a little bit more straight than the other one. and thenwe’re making our final cut on this l-shape

piece of tile that’ll go against the doorjam. we’re adding our clips. we’re back buttering this. and setting it in place.okay, so next day you want to hit all your t-lock clips parallel with the clip holder.so we’re just hitting along the grout joint, and that’ll just snap it off.we highly recommend removing the clips and the wedges the day after setting your tile.it’s so much easier to do it then. also, you can reuse the wedges, which is the coolthing about t-lock. the leveling clips really help out gettingeverything nice and level, but it does create a lot more cleanup. so having a little objectlike this 5.11 or this linoleum carpet knife really makes it easy to scrape the joints.probably you want to be careful with not to

tweak it or turn it sideway and chip yourtile. it can sometimes be really easy to just tweak this and easily chip the tile.if you want to see how to build a curbless shower like the one in today’s tutorial,check out all of our videos in the bathroom repair tutor video library. we’ll put alink to it right here. they’re awesome. not only do we show you how to put in allthe waterproofing, but we show you how to tile step-by-step and what materials and toolsmake this so much easier. thanks for watching our video today. if yougot any questions, ask them down in the comments, and we’re happy to help you out. take care.

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