Entryway Tile
Posted by Wayne
Fairly soon after I had completed work on updating our fireplace, I began a couple of projects in the small entryway of the house. The front door, the door to the garage, and a coat closet are all located in this space.
The ceiling in the entryway did not have the acoustic texture, although this was of little consolation considering the several weeks of hell I had recently endured scraping it off the ceiling in in several other areas of the house (see my entry Scraping Popcorn). The entryway was, however, ripe for several easy improvements.
The first area of improvement was the flooring. As this is the entryway to the house, naturally the area should have a waterproof surface that is easy to clean because people are constantly coming in with dirty feet. The builders or perhaps later residents of our house decided on a pretty ugly linoleum pattern that we couldn’t wait to replace. We decided to replace it with 12″x12″ travertine to match the travertine we used around the fireplace.
Tearing up the linoleum and trim on the walls was easy enough, however the glue that held the linoleum down didn’t come up so easy and left a pretty uneven surface. I spent a couple of hours gouging away at the glue and linoleum residue with a scraper and utility knife until I had a level and even plywood surface to work with.
My first step with the tiling was to lay out the tiles on the floor to make sure everything looked right. Because of the exact dimensions of the space I knew that I knew I was going to have to cut several tiles, so I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be forced into cutting one or more awkward pieces of the travertine later on once I had begun tiling and the mud was already setting.
Another thing I took into consideration when laying out the tiles was each tile’s appearance and quality. As travertine is a natural stone there are obviously some differences between the tiles. I put the ones that I didn’t think looked that great away from the center of the space and oriented some of them to areas that I knew would be cut off the tiles once I began tiling.
Once I had everything layed out and each tile oriented how I wanted it, I planned in my head which order I was going to tile in. This was somewhat complicated to envision because I knew to tile each row starting with a full tile so I could make the cut on the last tile and finish the row perfectly. However, the layout of the floor was such that on some rows the tile that was being cut was on the right of the row and some on the left. See the approximated diagram below to see the order in which I tiled (notice that the cut tile was always the last tile finished in a row).
Tiles # 16, 20, and 24 each had to have about 1″ cut off because the metal door threshold extended slightly into the space. Because this was very visible, these cuts would have to be perfect.
Once I had the order of the tiles committed to memory, I stacked the tiles in the living room starting with #24 on bottom and #1 on top. This way when I was tiling I could just pull a new tile off the top of the stack and I knew it was the right one, and even oriented in a direction that I knew looked good. Once the first three tiles in a row were layed down, I would measure and make the cut to the last tile before laying it in place. The lone exceptions to this were tiles #1 and 5 which had to be cut for the heater vent, but these cuts did not effect the dimensions of the tiles so it was not an issue.
I borrowed my brother’s tile saw which is just like a table saw except that it has a water reservoir that constantly keeps the blade and the tile covered with water. The water keeps the heat down, preserving the blade and the tile, and also prevents tile dust from flying everywhere which I understand would be not be smart to inhale. To read about another thing that would not be smart to inhale, check out this link for Jenkem.
Measuring, marking, and cutting the tiles with the tile saw was a breeze. I bought a premixed mortar which was applied with a v-notched trowel which I applied one row at a time, and then I laid the tiles on top of it the mortar. The v-notch leaves spaces in the mortar so you can push the tile down into it, securing it firmly. I put in 1/8″ spacers between the tiles to make sure that they all stayed square to each other. Another thing you have to keep a close eye on is that each tile is level to the next. This is usually easy to see with the naked eye because of how they reflect light, but I frequently placed a long level across the tiles as I worked just to make sure. If one was a little out of whack, I’d adjust it by lightly hitting the high corner with a rubber mallet.
Once I had allowed the mortar the recommended drying time, I filled the spaces with grout and sealed the tiles and grout several times to ensure that they would not get stained.
As you can see from the pictures below the trim and door are still a work in progress. At the time I was tiling I wanted to paint the lowest part of the trim before I tiled and we were in kind of a rush so that’s all that got done. The garage door will be replaced, probably this Summer, and at that time I’ll circle back and take care of the trim.
Two other things I did in this area which are not visible in this picture were to replace the recessed lighting baffle in the ceiling and the sliding closet doors.
After
Total Cost: $250, Total Time: 10 hours
POSTSCRIPT: Readers with a keen eye will notice that the drawing I posted and the ‘after’ photo differ slightly. I did the drawing from memory. The actual space is 1 foot bigger in each direction than I depicted in the drawing, and some of the cuts were slightly different. However, the point I was trying to make was that I really only had to make one cut per row, and I tried to make that the last tile in the row.
2 Responses to “Entryway Tile”
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March 3rd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
So yea, this is a good article and I think I’m going to do the same thing with my kitchen doorway next month. I like the look of the travertine a lot.
But um….
What the hell is with the link you ninja-inserted in the tile saw paragraph? Little did I know when I came to this page that I would leave permanently emotionally scarred.
I’ll never be able to look at “The kids these days” in the same light again.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
[…] mortar called Omni-Grip which worked very well. I had used it before on both the fireplace and entryway. A thin layer was applied to the wall with a v notch trowel, and then the tile sheets were ready to […]