Tiling Your Bathroom Yourself?
Tiling Your Bathroom Yourself?
Your bathroom is your personal space, your own dreamy oasis of calm and tranquillity. Here at My Beautiful Bathroom, you know that we can take care of everything you could need for your new dream bathroom, from design right through to installations. But we also recognise that a personal touch will always be something that bit extra special that you can do to make your bathroom your own.
Doing your own bathroom tiling is a great way of putting your personal stamp on your property. When done carefully it can be surprisingly easy to do, and you can look around at your new bathroom walls in pride, knowing that you did it all on your own. Doing your own bathroom tiling is cost-effective too for those on a limited budget, as it is far cheaper to do you tiling yourself. To ensure things run smoothly, take a look at our useful tiling guide to help you get started.
Choosing Your Tiles
This is the fun part! As you’re going to be doing the tiling yourself, it leaves you with a bit of extra money for tiles themselves. If you’re nervous it’s best to avoid complex patterns that may be difficult to match up during the tiling process. Go for tiles that are easy for you to lift and that do not require a very particular order to be followed. There’s a multitude of colours, sizes and finishes to choose from, so have fun with it! Remember, it’s best not to go for very big tiles as you will most likely need to cut them when it comes to tiling around windows and the bath.
What You’ll Need
Once you’ve got your tiles all picked out, (complementing your My Beautiful Bathroom bathroom, of course!) you’ll need several tools to hand before you can get started. Make sure you have a tile cutter and/or a tile cutting jig, a tile saw, a grout spreader, a spirit level (to ensure everything is even), tile nibblers, and an adhesive spreader. Make sure that the walls you want to tile are clean and dry before you get started. If the surface of the wall is uneven in anyway, you’ll need to smooth it out by removing any flaking paint or wallpaper to create a smooth surface for your tiles to sit on. It’s a good idea to have a piece of wood that you can use as a gauge stick to help you plot the tile positions on the wall. Lay the wood down next to the tiles (with a space for grout between each tile) and mark the positions of the tiles and the spaces along the gauge stick. This will help you when deciding where to put your tiles on the wall.
Deciding Where To Go First
It helps to start at the bottom and to use this as your guide for the rest of the wall. Work out where the bottom line of tiles will be and mark this out – use the spirit level to ensure they are even. From here, measure to the centre of the wall and mark it, and then set out how many tiles you will need on either side of the centre, using your gauge stick. This is all straightforward until you meet an object you must tile around (such as the window). In this case, make the window your starting point when tiling that wall so that all the surrounding tiles will be an equal size. Place your tile on to the adhesive and position it into the correct space, putting a spacer next to it before you add the next tile. Continue on in this way and then wipe any excess adhesive off the tile, leaving them to dry. Once all the main tiles are in place, you will need to cut border tiles to fill any gaps left in awkward places. Measure carefully and then use either your tile jig or your tile cutter. Smooth off the border edges with your tile sander and allow the tile adhesive to dry for 24 hours before applying grout. When applying grout, be careful to ensure that all the joints are filled. Polish the face of the tiles when the grout has dried, and there you have it… a perfectly tiled bathroom wall!
For more great bathroom ideas, give us a ring at My Beautiful Bathroom on 0141 771 3640.