Tiling - DIY Tiling Tips Advice

DIY Tiling Advice And Tips - Easy Tiling Tips

If you're a tiling newbie you will want to get some simple startup tips to ensure that your tiling job goes without a hitch.  Be careful to avoid being over zealous.  Better to start off with the basics and then move onto the larger, more intricate tiling work.  Leave the bigger tiling jobs to professional tilers until you have mastered this very under-estimated skill which requires a lot of patience and a keen eye for detail.

Tilers Tips

Here are some tips to get you started with your tiling :

• Plan your tiling job properly.  Think about it before you start.  There is no point in realising that you have made a fundamental mistake which will not only cost you time to put right, but money in lost tiles and wasted tiling materials.
• Calculate accurately the number of tiles you will need.  Remember, that most standard packs of tiles now come with enough tiles in them to cover approximately 1 square metre of wall or floor tiling.  Measure the height and width of the area that you are looking to carry out your tiling job and multiply the height and width to obtain the square metreage of tiles that you will need.  Then take these measurements with you to your chosen tiles supplier and give your measurements to a store assistant.
• If you are buying online many of the tile supplier websites will have handy tile quantity calculators where they will simply ask you to enter your measurements and hey presto the quantity of tiles or number of boxes and the cost involved will appear.  Remember to buy sufficient tile adhesive, grout, tile trims and spacers to carry out your job without having to run back to the shops.
• Check that you have the right type of tiling adhesive and grout to carry out your tiling job.  Different types of tiles require different products.  Check all packaging or search on websites to ensure that you are using the right product for your tiling job.
• Use a tiling gauging rod (don't worry - it's nothing fancy - its just a simple piece of wood).  Any piece of 50mm x 25mm timber batton will suffice.  This is used to work out how many tiles you need to place in a row and also to make sure that your line of tiling is straight.  Place some tiles in a row on the floor and put your tiling gauging rod next to the row of tiles.  Mark on the timber the points when one tile ends and other begins (i.e. - between the tiles).  Put numbers on each section that indicates where a tile was.  You can use this then throughout your tiling job without too much guesswork.
• Tiling gauging rods are particularly helpful when coming to corners.  You will be able to easily check whether you have enough space to fit another tile or whether you need to start cutting tiles to fit into corners.
• Check for pipes and cables.  Use a good quality pipe or cable detector as you don't want to start working on an area and find that you inadvertently manage to go through a water pipe or worse still cause yourself some damage with electricity.  Safety is never something you should scrimp on in DIY or home improvement jobs of any kind.  Remember, that DIY is one of the major causes of accidents so you need to always be ultra cautious when undertaking tiling jobs or any other type of property refurbishment job in your home. 
• Make sure things are straight.  Constantly check with a spirit level next to your tile gauging rod to ensure that you are on track and that tiles have been position not only vertically true, but also horizontally and also are level on either the floor or wall to avoid bumpy tiling.  Tiling needs to be tackled from several dimensions.  We told you it was a job which required patience and an eye for detail.  However, once you get the hang of it you will quickly master tiling jobs quickly and easily.
• Use a good tile cutter.  There is nothing worse than tiles which have chipped corners and bits taken out with over zealous amateur 'nibbling'.  If you are going to master tiling it is important that you have good quality tools.  A decent tile cutter should not cost too much and you should consider this an investment because you will no doubt cover the expense in the tiles that you manage to save and would otherwise have broken with handheld amateur tiling tools and nibblers.
• If you start to get fed up either persevere until you have the basics mastered or look for a good quality professional tiler.  You can always watch them then to see how they did the tiling job and learn from their expertise.  If you do get tiling quotes always check reviews from past jobs of tilers, get three quotes for any home improvement job, get quotes in writing or some other form of legal documentation (including the modern technologies like email and quote websites) and ask what guarantees the tiler will give on the job (including damaged tiles due to poor workmanship).