How to Lay Tile
Doing work yourself is a great way to maximize a home improvement project’s ability to increase the value of your home. While using a general contractor is often time saving and can make a job a lot easier on you (and your family), doing it yourself saves you the most money, builds confidence and is a really nice way to personalize your home. A fairly easy home improvement project to do yourself is laying tile. You could change a lot of surfaces in your home to tile–your kitchen counter top, bathroom vanity top, floors, etc. The process is pretty much the same, regardless of the surface you choose to tile.
Your first step will be to remove the current surface covering your project area. Be careful since you can never be sure what you’ll find during demo work, unless of course you built the existing structure yourself. Next, if needed, you’ll rebuild your sub floor (if you are doing the floor that is). After this you’ll need to lay down cement backer board. This is a specialized material that takes and holds tile really well. Screw this cement backer board to the walls and/or floor and then you’re ready to lay the tile.
Picking the tile you want is almost more difficult than laying it! Do you want to make a pattern out of your tile? If so, what colors look best together? What colors look best with the current color scheme of your room? What size tile do you want–big, small, medium? There are quite a few options of tile material also. Ceramic, glass (sometimes recycled glass), marble, and stone are just a few of your options. Many home improvement stores have tile departments with tons of samples and design ideas which can help you find exactly what your looking for.
Once you have made your choice, it’s time to put that tile down. First of all you’ll need to make a tile grid. Make sure you leave equal spaces between tiles so your grout lines are straight and even. When you get up against a wall or corner you have to watch your measurements so everything lines up nicely. And, when laying tile, make sure that you always follow the pattern from the center out. This way you’ll end up with a design that is balanced and flows. Next you’ll need some tile mastic. This is essentially the glue that will hold your tile in place. Tile mastic must be put on with a special notched trowel.
After the mastic is down go ahead and lay the tile. Use tile spacers to help keep things lined up straight. After the tile is down and set, you can put on the grout to fill in all the spaces. Clean off any excess grout, and you’re done! You have a nice newly tiled surface. If you want to save time more than money, though, so you are looking for a contractor in the Washington D.C. area, call D.R. Hartman Construction, Inc. and get them to do the job for you!