You guys, the mudroom floor is done and boy does it look great! Ryan and I made so much progress during February break and can’t wait to share this project with you. We chose a large format porcelain tile from Home Depot that is budget friendly with great color variation and texture. Bonus, it hides dirt really well! Why are kids so messy? As do-it-yourselfers this post isn’t a step-by-step ‘how to’ on flooring, but instead just some tips and tricks we picked up that helped us across the finish line.
TIP ONE // CHECK YOUR FLOOR
The success of any tile job is a solid and level base. Our subfloor was in terrible condition so we ripped it out and installed a new plywood subfloor. Check your subfloor for any low spots and fill with a self leveler. Next up, backer board. Backer board provides a solid surface under the tile that prevents movement that could lead to cracking down the road. Don’t forget no four corners should meet at any point and expect to use between 50 to 60 screws per backer board sheet. So many! A really great tip is to use a 16d common nail as a spacer between each backer board sheet. It is a perfect 1/8 inch gap that is needed between the sheets!
TIP TWO // GAME PLAN
When choosing a unique pattern like herringbone, consider how much tile you’ll need and which way the pattern should run before making your first cut. Our mud room is about 9′ x 12′ or 108 sq ft. so we budgeted for about 130 sq ft. of tile giving us a 20% buffer which we needed for all the 45-degree angle cuts along the edge of the walls. To help us determine a symmetrical pattern that would work in our mud room as well as the connecting kitchen Ryan leaned on his photoshop skills. Maybe a step too far for most, but as a first time tiler he had that saying “measure twice, cut once” motto stuck in his head. He mocked up a floor plan pretty quickly by copy and pasting rectangles (don’t forget to account for the space between your tiles) in the herringbone pattern and then locked those layers to rotate and move the pattern. This allowed us to determine the best direction of our pattern and where to start, but if we’re honest it was also an attempt to avoid a more complicated tile cut around the water pipes for our radiator. To give us one more level of confidence we used a technique of dry fitting a section of the tiles before applying the mortar.
TIP THREE // INVEST IN THE RIGHT TOOLS
You know that saying Ryan had in his head, “measure twice, cut once”? Well lets just say it would have gone a lot worse if it wasn’t for the wet saw we purchased. Having the right tools for the job makes all the difference – probably even saved our marriage (I’m not exaggerating!). The Rigid 7 in. Job Site Tile Saw featured the oversized cut capacity we needed for our large format tiles and the laser alignment system helped speed things up with all those 45-degree cuts. Well they weren’t exactly 45-degree cuts since our mudroom (let’s be honest the whole house) isn’t square!
The real MVP of our tiling job was the Rigid LevelMax Lippage Reduction and tile spacing system. For our herringbone pattern we needed a combination of the Reusable (orange) Spin Tops and Flat and Offset (white) Stems. The orange spin tops fasten to the stems and make quick work of leveling and spacing the tiles as you mortar. The next day when the mortar is dry, all you have to do is kick off the tops before grouting. Our kids even had fun kicking off the reusable tops and made quick work of collecting them off the floor for our next project.
There’s one more item that may seem obvious here, but I’m sure glad we didn’t overlook it. Do yourself a favor and pick up a pair of flooring knee pads for this project (gosh how old do I sound), trust me.
// sources // tile – corso Italia alps silver tile // grout – mapei ultracolor timberwolf //
