Whether you’re planning to lay vinyl, linoleum, ceramic or stone floor tiles, one of the most important tasks takes place before you glue or mortar down the first piece: the layout.
The last thing you want is to get halfway through your tiling project and discover that the tiles aren’t square to the shape of the room. Or that they’re not square to each other. Or that the last row of tiles is going to be only an inch wide along the wall. Any of these problems will make it look like you didn’t think it through. And with the first tiles already adhered to the floor, it will be too late to easily fix it.
This is why it’s crucial to set up a carefully measured grid over the floor before you start tiling, then to a test-run with unattached tiles to make sure you have no surprises once you start installing them.
Snapping the Lines
Tile is laid from the center of the floor and built outward toward the perimeter in a grid pattern. This may seem odd if you’ve gone through life assuming that tile floors are laid from one end of the room to the other, but starting at the center guarantees that the tiles along one wall end up the same size as the tiles along the wall across from it.
Start the layout by dividing the floor into four squares, with two perpendicular lines that intersect at the center of the floor. The easiest way to get the lines is to use a chalk snap line. This is a string that’s rolled up in a canister of colored chalk. You pull the string out and, with the help of an assistant, stretch it tightly across the floor, then pull up on it in the middle and let it snap back down, leaving a straight, clean line of chalk.
Each of the two lines should go from the middle of one edge of the floor to the middle of the edge across from it. Measure each edge carefully to find the middle.
Before you snap the second line (perpendicular to the first), lay a carpenter’s square at the intersection and adjust the chalkline as needed so the two lines will be absolutely square to one another. You should end up with a big wall-to-wall “plus” sign across the whole floor.
The Dry Run
Your squared snap lines ensure the tiles along the walls will be cut to a consistent size at opposite ends of the room—but they don’t ensure that the size won’t be too small. Overly thin cut tiles along the walls (say, less than a third of a tile width) will look awkward.
To avoid this, do a “dry run” with your tiles, laying them without adhesive, starting at the intersection of the two chalk lines and setting them in rows stretching out to the walls in wall four directions. You don’t have to set down tiles over the whole floor, just along the lines in a “plus” pattern, to see where they “land” by the walls.
Note: If you’re laying ceramic rather than vinyl tiles, you will be setting spacers between the tiles as you lay them so they will have grout lines, so you need to space the tiles properly during the dry run as well.
Making Adjustments
If the space by the walls at one end of a row of tiles is less then a third of a tile wide, then move that whole line toward that wall, making it start with a full tile. Remember, the other end was going to be the same width—so, less than a third of a tile wide—meaning this action will cause that space at the other end to get wider, since you’ll be pulling it away from that wall. The result is that the tiles in that direction will be full tiles on one end of the floor and not-quite-full on the other end, but wider than they would have been.
Yes, this will violate the whole notion of getting the tiles the same at either end—but given the choice between a consistent size that’s too small and a varying size that isn’t, the latter is preferable.
Once you’ve adjusted the tile in both directions as needed, re-snap the lines to adjust to the new configuration, again using a square to ensure the lines are exactly perpendicular to each other. The floor is now ready for tiling.
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