My Tiling

Hello and thanks for visiting My Tiling  this is a new site aimed at tiling for DIY the site is still under construction so please bookmark this page see you soon and happy tiling

thanks steve

The basics of setting out in tiling are find your vertical centre and work away from it right and left ,this ensures equal cuts on each side .

The same applies to your horizontal centre, in the case of a kitchen this is made easier by only having to find the vertical centre, the reason for this is that you use your work top as the horizontal starting point .

You should allways use the work top to start tiling with a full tile so as you work up towards the wall units the cuts will be there ,most DIY projects you will see start with a full tile in one corner then working your way towards the end of the run there will be a cut .

Most people think this is easier as you don’t have to cut one side of the tiles but never looks right having  a full tile at one end then a cut at the other so take the time to centre the wall and work out from the centre this will leave you with two options ,working from your centre vertical line work out wards with a tile first starting with the tile edge on the line you have marked mark the opposite end of the tile on the wall ,keep moving the tile along marking it on the wall as you go until you reach the end of your wall until you cant get a full tile in the space that’s left .

Take note of the size of the space that’s left then go back to your centre line and put the tile this time so that the middle of the tile is on the line ,work your way out again to the end this time you will have a space that is different to the last always try and use the larger of the two spaces as this will look better than smaller cuts at the end of run .

Other things to think of when working out your bond is to think of any features that might be preasent in kitchens the most obvious one is the splash back behind your cooker where normaly there would be an extractor fan ,

in this area it important to start from the centre of this feature so you have equal cuts people will see this area more than the end of your wall ,so in this case you would not start from the centre of the wall you would use the splash back making this feature look better than the ends of the wall .

By doing this you will most likely end up with odd cuts at each end of your wall but the main part the splash back will look its best .

By starting at the centre of a wall or floor and working out choosing the bond which leaves the biggest cut at the end ensures you don’t run out of tile by this i mean if you start with a full tile as you work up a wall it might fall away from at the ends if not straight so as you work your way up a gp starts to appear and gets larger the more the wall falls away this happens a lot in older houses .

So by leaving a cut at the end you can cut your way out of trouble by just putting a bigger cut in the end to make up for the wall falling out .

Never start tiling until you are happy with all the cuts once the tiles are on its a big job to take them off and start again tiling should be a happy experience and will be very rewarding if you take time to get the basics right .