Garage Conversion Part 14 – Tiling and Grouting

Sunday 28th August

In order to have full access to the floor area, the first task was to remove the washing machine and tumble dryer.

That done, I started laying out the tiles to determine the best fit.

Ideally, you want to have either a tile in the middle, or the join between two tiles to be in the middle of the doorway, this also hold true for pedestal sinks and toilets in bathrooms.

You also want to aim for as many of the cuts as possible to leave more than half a tile to stick down, this avoids loads of small tile pieces around the edge that may not stick down well.

This also means that most of the cut tiles will be from a new tile, which in turn cuts down on searching for off-cuts of the right size, which also saves time.

After re-arranging the tiles a few times, I believe this is the optimal pattern for this room:

In this picture, you can see that the edges of the tiles are not straight and so a reasonable gap needs to be left for grouting to look good.

After clearing out the tiles again it was time to seal the floor so that the moisture is not sucked out of the adhesive when it is applied to the floor.

Here you can see the primer has been applied and is being allowed to dry.

Monday 29th August

I started off by laying out the tiles again in the same pattern as yesterday, then mixed up a batch of adhesive to fix them in place.

The adhesive is mixed 4:1 powder to water by volume, so I mixed up enough for 1 litre of water.

This turned out to be enough to stick 18 tiles down.

I then proceeded to cut all of the edge tiles using an angle grinder with a diamond wheel, one of the blue ones in the picture below.

These are Parkside disks from Lidl and are £3.99 for the pack of 4, an absolute bargain if you ask me.

To determine the correct places to cut the tile, it is best to flip it over in the direction you want to mark, then the good edge is against the wall and you mark where it needs to be cut.

Complex cuts, simply involve flipping in two directions to mark out.

Once all of the required cuts had been made, it was time to stick down the remaining tiles.

I mixed up another batch with about 1.5 litres of water, this was about 2 tiles worth short and so I had to mix up another tiny amount for the last couple of tiles.

Here is the floor with all of the tiles stuck down.

There is still enough room for the door to miss the tiles.

Skirting will cover up the edges of the tiles along the wall.

The plinth and end panel will hide the edges of the tiles under the cabinets.

After a couple of hours, the adhesive had set hard enough to allow me to grout.

The grout is mixed 3:1 powder to water by volume, so I mixed up a first batch using 500ml of water.

I spread the grout with a rubber float and this first batch went about half way, so a second batch of the same amount finished it off.

After about 35-40 minutes, I then cleaned the tiles with an emulsifying pad (dish scourer) and a couple of buckets of water.

Finally cleaning the tiles with a damp cloth.

And here is the end result.

A second view from the outside door.

Now that my back is well and truly killing me, I think I will go and have a nice shower to remove all of the tile dust and have a well earned brew.

Sunday 28th August

Monday 29th August

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