The subtleties of laying ceramic tiles with your own hands. Laying tiles on the floor - do it yourself and get an excellent result! The nuances of laying tiles on the floor

Ceramic tiles have been used for flooring for a long time. It is durable, wear-resistant, practical and beautiful material. Of course, only professionals can afford exclusive finishing. But the floor in the toilet, bathroom or kitchen is quite possible to do it yourself. Be persistent and everything will work out. Even if you break a few tiles, the savings will still be many times greater.

What are the characteristics of ceramic products?

• composition of raw materials: from red, white, colored clay;
• manufacturing method: pressed, extruded;
• firing: single, double;
• material structure: porous, dense;
• type of coating: glazed, unglazed.

For deviations of up to 10 cm, a leveling cement-sand mixture is first applied, and after drying, a self-leveling one.

The wrong choice of mixture will cause the surface to crack or be poorly leveled, which will lead to additional costs and loss of time to correct the work.

If you plan to lay tiles on top of an old tiled base, no leveling compounds will be needed.

Finally, ceramics can be laid on a wooden floor, having previously strengthened it. For pre-cladding, cement-fiber boards will be required.

Step 3. Purchasing everything you need

So, the layout pattern is selected, the method of preparing the base is outlined. What will be required from the materials:

Main:

• ceramics;
• glue;
• grouting (on the lexicon of builders - fugue);
• impregnation;
• plastic spacers.

Auxiliary (base preparation):

• self-leveling mixture (or cement fiber boards);
• primer-primer;
• roll or coating waterproofing;
• quartz sand;
• degreasing agents.

What tools will be needed:

• container for glue;
• electric drill with mixer nozzle;
• Master OK;
• spatulas: serrated metal for applying glue and narrow rubber for grouting;
• manual roller or electric tile cutter, as an option - tile cutter-nippers, glass cutter;
• tungsten string with diamond coating;
• a hacksaw blade for metal or a jigsaw for sawing (for attaching a string);
• an annular crown for drilling holes, or a ballerina drill;
• roulette;
• marking cord;
• pencil;
• square;
• short (up to 300 mm) building level;
• metal rule or level 1.5 m long;
• rubber mallet.
• protective glasses.

Step 4. Preparing the floor

In order for the coating to hold securely on the base, not fall off and crunch underfoot, the base should not be loose, non-rigid (unsteady). After the revision, determine whether something needs to be done with the base, if yes, then what exactly. Based on the results of the audit (step 2), a decision is made on how to strengthen the base.

Concrete base:

Loose, flaking places are scraped off manually (with a chisel) or with a perforator with a flat nozzle. Clean the surface of dust, dirt and grease with the help of chemicals. Align the base using a solution based on one or another leveling mixture.

Apply a layer of liquid priming primer. Glue roll or coating waterproofing. Sprinkle a thin layer of quartz sand on top (for better adhesion of the adhesive to the base).

In order to lay a new coating on an old tile, sand the base with a rotary or surface grinder (round metal brush, abrasive wheel, abrasive belt).

For wooden floor:

The base is covered with gypsum-fiber sheets (GVL) 20 mm thick (for dry rooms) or cement-bonded particle boards (DSP) 10-15 mm thick (in rooms with high humidity). Joints should not be located between the boards; for GVL they are filled with special glue, for DSP - with elastic polyurethane mastic.

Step 5. Markup

The outline of a room is rarely perfectly rectangular. With a plain floor finish, this is not striking. Perpendicular tile joints emphasize the unevenness of the walls. How to reduce this illusion? Procedure:

If the walls are straight enough (diagonal difference is not more than 1 cm), draw one of the marking lines parallel to the long side of the room.

Step 6. Glue preparation

Dry mix for tile adhesive is sold in 25 kg bags. To close it, take an open container with a volume of 5 - 10 liters (empty plastic cans from paint, putty and other materials are suitable). The main thing is that the inside is dry, clean and fat-free.

Pour a certain amount of water into the container, then add the appropriate amount of dry mix (the ratio is indicated on the package).

Make the first batch small until you feel how much solution you can use during its viability.

Take an electric drill with a mixer attachment and mix the contents until the solution acquires the consistency of sour cream and there are no unmixed lumps left in it.

To avoid stratification of the solution, do not set the mixer speed too high.

Let the mixture stand for 10-15 minutes and mix again. The glue is ready to use.

Step 7. Styling

How to lay floor tiles can be seen in this video:

We dance from the stove. The first tile is laid according to the markup (step 5) according to the selected layout option. If work is started from the center of the room, a quarter of the marking is chosen, opposite to the entrance, so as not to walk on the newly laid tile.

With a trowel spread on the floor the amount of mortar based on 2 - 3 tiles. Use a notched trowel with a notch width of 6 to 8 mm to smooth out the adhesive. Lay the first tile in the marking corner, lightly press it from above with your hands or with a level, checking its horizontalness with a short level. If necessary, adjust the horizon by sinking one edge of the tile with a rubber mallet or placing an additional portion of glue under it.

The next tile is installed close to the first, dividing crosses are placed in the corners, some prefer to put them upright on the sides of the tile. Check the horizontal position and relative position with a long level. After the smeared surface is laid out, the next portion of the solution is laid and smoothed.

Putting in a few more. After a while, it will be clear: how many tiles you have time to put on one portion of the solution, after which the work will go faster. When the time comes to lay additional elements (non-whole), they are cut to the desired size. Curly cuts are made for the passage of various pipes. Laying is carried out, starting from the far corners of the room and ending at the front door.

Step 8: Grouting

The grout mixture is diluted to a thick paste, after which it is applied to the tile gaps, trying to fill them to the full depth. Only then can you be sure that after some time cavities will not appear on the seams, where moisture will penetrate.

The joints are filled with paste using a hard rubber spatula, making cross movements with it.
along the seam from left to right and vice versa, while holding at an angle of 45 ° to the floor. Excess fugue is removed with the same rubber spatula, leading it along the seam perpendicular to the coating.

After about 20 minutes, the floor is finally wiped with a damp sponge, which is periodically rinsed from adhering grout particles. After complete hardening, the surface of the fugue is covered with a sealant or impregnation for joints to protect it from moisture.

The subtleties of styling

We offer you to watch a video on laying tiles:

Some tips from the experience of tilers:

• For laying on the floor, it is better to choose ceramics with a matte surface;
• If possible, choose a tile without chamfers (roundings) at the ends. They visually increase the thickness of the seam, that is, if the seam is chosen equal to 3 mm, then it will look like 5 - 6 mm;
• When choosing a notched trowel, it is assumed that the thicker the ceramic product, the wider the cutouts should be;
• For stronger bonding, sometimes the back side of the tile is also smeared: a layer of glue is applied with a notched trowel, and it is removed with a flat one (coating “on the strip”);
• In this way, it is also more reliable to glue large format products;
• To remove improperly laid tiles (especially if it is not located on the edge), special suction cups are used;
• The crosses are taken out without waiting for the glue to seize completely;
• Before grouting ceramic products with a rough surface, in order to avoid contamination, they are pre-coated with a protective liquid;
• Tile seams should be slightly recessed relative to the tiles. To do this, after grouting, the seams are ironed with the end of a metal tube, the diameter of which is slightly larger than the width of the seam;
• Choose the right time after which the coating can be wiped from the fugue. If you start too early, the grout will smear on the tile, and if you delay it, the putty will harden and you have to scrape it off, at the risk of scratching the surface.

So, the technology of finishing the floor with ceramics does not present any particular difficulties. The main thing is to follow all the tips and recommendations for tile work. More self-confidence, and the new floor will delight you for years to come.

As a rule, it is customary to trust only experienced specialists to finish the walls with tiles. And no wonder, because one wrong step can ruin not only a lot of work and materials, but also the whole appearance of the room. That is why most people refuse to venture to do these jobs on their own. Although, in fact, laying tiles is a fairly simple matter - this is a kind of facing constructor, which, under certain conditions, is assembled easily and simply..

How to prepare the base for laying tiles

Laying tiles with your own hands is easy if you adhere to the following conditions:

• First, you need smooth walls. How to achieve this? In view of modern repair technologies, nothing is simpler, for example: installed on glue, it solves all the problems of unevenness. For the bathroom, it is better to use moisture-resistant gypsum, and for other rooms, ordinary wall plaster is also suitable.
• Secondly, observance of the horizon level in the process of laying tiles. If there are even walls, it is enough to lay the first row of tiles in the level, and for this it is necessary to clearly maintain the horizontality of the row.
• Thirdly, you need to use crosses correctly. They have a conical shape, so they need to be inserted between the tiles, evenly immersing them in the seam.
• Well, and most importantly - do not rush and carefully install each individual tile.

Do-it-yourself tiling

A very important point in the technology of laying tiles is the primer of the base - a deep penetration primer increases adhesion and allows you to stick tiles, as they say, for centuries. It is necessary to prime the walls with a maklovitsa (a roller is not suitable for this purpose) - you need to rub the soil into the surface to be lined until white foam appears. At the end of the priming process, the surface must be well dried and only then proceed with further work.

Laying tiles on the wall photo

How to lay the first row of tiles

To maintain the evenness of the first row of tiles laid on the wall, and at the same time to prevent the tiles from sliding down, supports are attached, which are great for drywall profiles ud or cd. It is better to use the latter, as they are more rigid and do not bend under the weight of the tile.

Such supports are fastened, depending on the material of the existing walls, either with self-tapping screws or dowels. They must be fixed strictly in a horizontal level along all the walls to be faced at once - to maintain the level, it is better to use a hydraulic or laser tool. will give a large error, which will come out in the most inappropriate place.

Tiling technologies

When the supports are ready, you can start preparing the glue and direct tiles. It is very important to apply the adhesive correctly. If you preliminarily plaster or plaster, then the glue is applied using a special comb, which ensures the uniformity of the glue being spread. You need to apply glue not only on one surface - a stronger attachment of the tile to the wall ensures that the glue is applied immediately to both the wall and the tile.

To prevent the layers of glue from getting too thick, it is better to use a comb with a fine tooth within 6-8mm, then in total you will get a layer of glue 8-10mm. This is quite enough for the tile to be thoroughly glued to the wall.

There is one more small nuance here: glue must be smeared on the wall in one direction, and on the tile in the other. In this way, the adhesive strips will overlap each other, which ensures that there are no voids under the tiles.

Well, then everything is simple - the tile is applied to the wall and pressed a little. Then the second and third ones fit in the same way. After three or four tiles have been laid, they must be installed in a plane. To do this, we take a long rack level and, using it as a guide, finally press the tiles into, while exposing them to the same plane. When you make sure that there is no gap between several tiles and the level, you can also check the vertical - if everything is fine there, then you can move on a little more boldly.

Each subsequent tile is laid under the level, resting it on several previous ones and the newly laid tile, while you need to control the gap between the level and the entire tile.

And do not forget to insert crosses between the tiles - one at the top, the other at the bottom.

It is also necessary to control the height of the tile, it is impossible to allow one tile to be at least a millimeter higher than the other. If this happens, then the level of laying the tiles was chosen incorrectly.

Exactly according to the same principle, decorative tiles are used to decorate all the walls of the room.

How to lay tiles on the wall with your own hands

The subtleties and nuances of wall tiling

We have considered the general technology of laying tiles on walls, it's time to study the intricacies of this process - there are a lot of them, and you need to know everything for a complete and high-quality installation.

1. Circular wall decoration with decorative tiles. What does it mean? The fact that one row is laid out immediately on all the walls to be faced - if we are talking about the complete cladding of the room, then before proceeding to the second row, the first one must be laid around the entire perimeter. You can, of course, lay tiles on each wall separately, but for starters, in order not to make many mistakes, it is better to use the above-described method of laying tiles. In this case, it becomes possible to qualitatively, without failures in height and deviations in level, clad the outer and inner corners of the room.

How to properly lay tiles

2. A game of crosses. Quite often, due to factory defects, or rather, due to the difference in the size of the tile within one millimeter, seam failures occur. If this problem appears on the last rows of tiles, this is still normal, but if on the second or even on the third row, then by the middle of the wall it can turn into a huge failure (about 1 cm), which does not look very aesthetically pleasing. You can fight this with the help of crosses - by inserting them deeper or smaller, you can adjust the height of each individual tile. To prevent the appearance of teeth, each tile must be tapped with a hammer along the wall, nailing it as close as possible to neighboring tiles.

3. Doorways. When decorating walls with decorative ceramic tiles in the bathroom or in the kitchen, every time there is a problem with bypassing doorways. In order to qualitatively bypass them and not violate the laying order, there are two ways in the tiler's arsenal. Firstly, you can use the help of a laser level, the vertical projection of which is oriented relative to the extreme tile above the doorway. In this case, the tiles on the other side of the doorway are laid, as it should be - from top to bottom. Secondly, you can turn the world upside down and try to lay the last row from the opening from top to bottom. The process is complex, but interesting, and most importantly real - a thin layer of glue makes it possible to carry it out.

Grouting joints when laying tiles

4. External and internal corners. To somehow hide the cut edges of the tiles, you can use special corners - they are both internal and external. They are installed quite simply - one of their edges is hooked under the end of the tile, and the second is pressed in by the adjacent one. As for the inner corners, in them the cut edge normally overlaps even without a corner, the trim on one wall is covered with a whole tile laid on the other wall. It is for this reason that circular laying of tiles is good.

5. Grouting tiles. When wondering how to properly lay ceramic tiles with your own hands, you should not lose sight of the process of grouting - the wrong putty can negate all your efforts. This is done as follows: the grout diluted with water is pressed into the seams between the tiles with a rubber spatula. You don’t need to grout the entire tile at once - it’s almost impossible to tear off the grout later. First, hide a couple of square meters, then gently clean them with your finger, and remove the composition remaining on the tile with a dry cloth. In this way, for a couple of square meters, the entire tile is overwritten.

That's basically it. We can say that the tiling is done, it remains only to admire your work and be proud of your extraordinary abilities.

The most common option for cladding wall surfaces, floors in bathrooms and in the kitchen is laying ceramic tiles.

Despite the prevalence of this method, many masters and customers make a number of typical mistakes, which we will try to figure out.

Ceramic tile laying technology: what not to do

Basic rules for successful completion of work:

• tiles must be of high quality;
• the surface of the walls must be of high quality;
• laying tiles must also be of high quality.

Without constant control over compliance with the three components, you will not get anything good as a result of even very painstaking work.

Checking the quality of tiles

• when starting work, some maters do not calibrate the tiles, i.e. they do not check the evenness of the edges, the identity of the tiles in the package, and also do not check the tiles for the correspondence of the corners (the critical difference is 1.5 mm);
• also the tiles must be checked for color matching of the coating in different packages;

IMPORTANT! Sorting and identifying defects will be more successful if, before laying, the master lays the tiles on the floor or on the wall to “try on” the pattern and position the tiles on the surface.

Checking the quality of the base of the walls or floor

• on the surface of the walls there should be no bulges or depressions, cracks, fungus, protruding nails, etc.;
• wall/wall joints, as well as wall/floor, wall/ceiling joints must be led out at 90° (permissible error - 0.01°);

IMPORTANT! If the master claims that a large unevenness can be removed during installation by beveling the laying a little, check and refuse to accept such work. Facing performed without observing this rule may be unstable, as well as impartial.

• after leveling the wall or floor, "fitting" laying must also be done.

Quality styling

• the key to successful installation is work according to the laying scheme agreed with the customer, taking into account hidden undercuts, the exposed seam line, which will subsequently adjoin, for example, the kitchen wall, and other nuances (it is unacceptable that after laying ceramic tiles and installing furniture in the kitchen it turns out that tile joints do not run parallel to the walls, but at an angle - this will spoil the appearance of any kitchen);
• professionals lay tiles only on a solid foundation, i.e. on concrete or on plaster, any other base (on plywood, chipboard, OSB, on porcelain stoneware slabs or on drywall) is not intended for laying tiles;

IMPORTANT! An exception to the previous paragraph may be cases of facing small areas (up to 3 m²).

Proper tiling

Brief instructions for tiling, helping to avoid the most common mistakes:

The strength of the screed, performed on the floor, must be no less than the strength of the adhesive used in the work. So, for example, Ceresit CM-117 glue has a strength of about 10 MPa, and therefore the strength of the base must be at least 12 MPa. Solution M-150 has such strength. You can also use cement (M-400) and sand in a ratio of 1: 3-2.5.

IMPORTANT! When doing work with your own hands or when purchasing materials yourself, pay attention to the purpose of the glue: for example, the Ceresit CM-117 adhesive mentioned above is an adhesive for lining pools, balconies, plinths, as well as for facing surfaces without dismantling old tiles.

There is no mention of use in bathrooms or kitchens. Therefore, you need a different adhesive. For example, Ceresit CM-11, but the range of its application is not so wide. Therefore, carefully read the description of the scope of a particular adhesive, as well as methods for its preparation (you may need plasticizers or other bonding additives)!

The base after the organization of the screed or alignment must be primed.

The trowel teeth must not exceed the thickness of the tile in height.

To align the laying of tiles, it is necessary to use crosses up to 4 mm wide. In another case, the seams between the tiles will come out too wide, the grout for their processing will take more and, accordingly, there will be more area for the formation of persistent pollution. The optimal cross size is 3 mm.

Photo 1 - Plastic crosses

The options for laying crosses may be different, but it is better to place them in the center of the tile, and not at their intersection. Centering the tiles will help hide the unevenness of the tiles at the seams (the photo below shows what laying without crosses or incorrect installation of them can lead to).

Photo 2 - Error in laying tiles - uneven seam

Crosses must be removed on the second day after laying the tiles, slightly prying it with a knife or other cross, etc.

However, all the necessary rules are described in the relevant SNiP. Do not be lazy to read this document before starting finishing work - it will help you avoid many troubles.

Laying ceramic tiles: VIDEO

Part 1:

Part 2:

$ Cost of tile work

• Kyiv − from 65-80 UAH/m²;
• Moscow - from 350-380 rubles / m².

The traditional finishing material for wet rooms is ceramic tiles. It has a long service life, spectacular appearance and easy maintenance. But in order for all these characteristics to really appear, the tiles must be correctly laid.

Violations in technology lead to chips, cracks in the coating, which cannot be repaired. Therefore, to everyone who thinks that laying tiles in the bathroom with their own hands is a simple matter, we advise you to carefully study the nuances of the work technology. It is on them that we will dwell in more detail.

The sequence of work on laying wall and floor tiles has been repeatedly described on our website. Therefore, we will focus only on important points.

Do I need to level the base?

The smoother the base, the easier it is for a non-professional to lay tiles, because throughout the room you will use the same thickness of the adhesive solution. If the walls are curved, when laying the glue will lie unevenly, voids will form, and the tile will fall behind in a couple of years. And the floor will begin to chip or burst.

Even a professional is not able to determine the evenness of walls or floors by eye. In our case, it is necessary to check the walls with a plumb line (a weight on a rope). The end of the rope is applied in the corner to the ceiling near the wall to be checked, and the weight is lowered almost to the floor (for 1-2 cm).

If the stretched rope does not build a parallel with the wall, then the base must be leveled. To do this, marks are applied to the wall, which is adjacent to the measured one. Thus, it is necessary to examine all the walls.

If the tape measure shows a big difference in centimeters from the plumb line to the wall at the top and bottom, you will have to level the base

Professionals check the floor for curvature with a water or laser level. But such devices may not be in the house. Buy for the bathroom floor? Extra waste of money. You can make a hydraulic level from two syringes and a dropper or another transparent hose from 1.2 mm in diameter.

To create a water level, use syringes for thick needles and a hose with a large diameter so that the liquid can move freely inside

And if the bathroom is small, you can get by with a two-meter rack level, beating off the beacons at a distance of 0.5 m from each other. A metal profile is used as a beacon (to which drywall sheets are attached).

They put the profiles on the solution, laying it out in small slides around the entire perimeter of the bathroom floor.

When you remove the beacons from the screed, carefully prime the holes and cover with mortar flush with the rest of the floor surface

Decide on the height of the screed in advance. The floor in the bathroom, according to GOSTs, should be 0.3-0.5 cm lower than all other floors in order to prevent flooding of the entire apartment in case of water leakage.

So when leveling the base, calculate in advance the total height of the finished floor with the tiles already laid and estimate how many cm to pour the screed.

How to properly waterproof a floor

Another important nuance when laying tiles on the floor is waterproofing the base. If you do not live on the first floor, then everyone has a chance to flood the neighbors from below. Therefore, it is necessary to exclude even the minimum possibility of leakage.

Do not be fooled by the information that you can waterproof the bathroom with ordinary plastic wrap. Even a very dense film under a concrete screed is destroyed at an accelerated pace, since it is not intended for this. After 4-5 years, your waterproofing will be completely destroyed.

Therefore, as waterproofing materials, choose only those proven by practice: roofing material, bitumen or bulk composition with polymers.

• All cleaned and primed floor slabs + 20 cm of walls are covered with bituminous mastic.
• Roofing material is rolled over with an overlap, capturing the walls as well. The burner goes through the joints to get a solid, airtight "trough".
• More modern compositions - bulk - are created on the basis of cement with polymer additives. They are laid, like a screed, only in a thin layer.

Self-leveling compounds for waterproofing floors contain polymers that, after hardening, make the concrete impervious to moisture.

Features of applying primers

The screed must be primed before laying the tiles in order to increase the adhesion of the finish to the base and reduce the consumption of the adhesive solution. Ready soils are not diluted, but used in the proportion suggested by the manufacturer.

They smear it with a wide paint brush - a maklovitsa, having previously removed all dust and debris from the concrete.

It is important to apply primer correctly. The brush is not just driven over the surface, but pressed down, as if rubbing the solution into the base. A sign that the concrete is saturated with soil will be protruding white foam. It means that you can stop impregnation.

It is more convenient to apply the first layer of soil in the evening, so that the solution is completely absorbed and dried before morning. After the second operation, you need to wait until the concrete absorbs moisture, but it is not necessary to wait for complete drying. You can start laying ceramics.

Rules for applying glue

The adhesive solution is applied to the floor with a notched trowel, which the finishers called the "comb". With a flat edge, the glue is distributed over the screed, and the excess is removed with cloves and the layer is leveled.

It is important to spread the solution with the notched side of the spatula in only one direction.

The excess adhesive solution removed with the spatula teeth is sent back to the bucket and used on another part of the floor, after mixing with the rest of the adhesive

Look at the back of the tile before applying adhesive to the tile. Most manufacturers leave a special arrow there, which shows in which direction the adhesive solution should be laid (along or across the tile).

In principle, in a miniature bathroom, this nuance is not so important, but in large bathrooms, due to a violation of technology, the thickness of the seam may change (it will narrow or expand).

And now the main nuance: the adhesive strips on the floor and on the tiles must be perpendicular to each other during installation, i.e. if the adhesive grooves on the floor run along the room, then on the tile they should be located across.

Such a bond is the strongest and completely fills the inter-tile space with a solution.

The perpendicular arrangement of adhesive strips on tiles and walls provides an additional guarantee that the finish will not slip and evenly stick to the base.

Do you need crosses when laying

In the absence of experience with tiles, the ideal joint width remains a problem, because when laying a millimeter offset in the first row, it will turn into a thick joint in the future. To keep the stitching the same size, you will need cross stitches.

Please note that these parts come in different thicknesses. The thinnest - 1 mm - are used only for seamless installation or in designer tiles, which only professionals can work with.

For ordinary inexpensive tiles on the walls, they buy crosses 3-4 mm thick. The floor is usually placed with crosses 5 mm thick.

The flexibility of the crosses should be checked in advance. If they are made of low-quality plastic, they break easily. During removal from the dried mortar, you may encounter the problem that individual pieces of crosses break off and get stuck in the seams. They will have to be picked out with something sharp.

High-quality crosses bend, are elastic, but it is very difficult to break them.

For floor tiles, thicker crosses are selected than for wall tiles, and they are placed in pairs on each side of the tile.

How and when to rub the seams?

Even if you want to quickly finish laying, rubbing will have to be postponed for a day or two. The adhesive solution must dry completely.

When diluting the dry mixture with water, make sure that its consistency is not too thin or thick. A rare one will float off the walls and will not completely fill the seams, but too thick leaves voids inside, where moisture can easily penetrate. The normal consistency looks like high-fat sour cream, in which there is a spoon.

Rub with a small rubber spatula. After 3-4 hours, you can correct the work with your fingers. If you notice that holes have formed in the grout, there are missing areas - wear rubber gloves and apply the required amount of grout with your fingers.

For grouting, a spatula that is not too soft is suitable so that the rubber can push the composition into the seam, and not bend under hand pressure

Wipe excess off tiles with a dry cloth. This will save you from streaks on the tile, and you do not have to rinse it several times. A sponge is also suitable, but again dry.

After a day, the tiles can be washed with a damp cloth.

When deviations from technology are justified

Non-professionals are advised to start laying tiles from the walls, because particles of mortar, tools, and even the tile itself will fly to the floor. But if the bath is changed in the room, then it is installed on a finished, tiled floor and draft walls.

• tile the floor area where the bath will be installed;
• put the sanitary device in place;
• then lay the tiles on the walls (except for the bottom row);
• and at the end - finish the floor and the first row of walls.

Another sequence of work will be when installing a shower cabin.

• First, an inclined draft floor is poured under the booth with the installation of all communications.
• Tiled walls.
• Finish the floor in the shower. The slope of the tile should go towards the drain hole.
• Lay tiles on the rest of the floor of the room.

Styling errors: how can defects be corrected?

Naturally, when mastering technology, it is impossible to do everything perfectly. There will be errors, but you need to see them in time and correct them. When the solution dries up, unfortunately, it will not work to remove the defect, you will have to break the tile.

The tile lay down in “steps”, and not in one plane

The reason is a violation of the plane of the wall. If there is no ideal horizontal, then gradually the vertical seams will shift. To correct the defect, it is necessary to trim the tiles already in the first row in order to build the correct horizontal.

If you notice a defect when the wall is almost laid out, find the row from which the displacement began and wedged the seams. The lowest seam can be corrected with matches or wedges, and the rest with crosses of different thicknesses.

It is possible to fix a lopsided row of tiles only until the adhesive solution has hardened, so check the quality of the horizontal immediately, on fresh masonry

Floor tiles can also move in steps if the angle of the walls is not straight. Therefore, check this in advance and, when laying the tiles, cut the tiles to withstand the angle.

Tiles fell out of line

If you see that one of the tiles in the row lay obliquely, the horizontal has shifted, it means that you forgot to insert a cross in the seam (or it fell out).

The tile may appear misaligned if it came with a factory defect (beveled corner). There is only one way out - to replace with another, more even

Fix this by substituting a cross in the right place, and attach the tile itself to the neighboring ones using masking tape. The glue will get tired - and the tile will sit in place.

Masking tape helps to avoid curvature of the seams and mixing of tiles, so it is often used on difficult areas of cladding

Tiles sink deep

Visually visible when some tiles are too recessed into the mortar. They are knocked out of the common plane. The reason is poor-quality application of glue. Either it was applied in an uneven layer, or you succumbed to the common belief that you can glue pointwise.

Some craftsmen smear the adhesive solution only on the corners of the tile, arguing that this is enough to fix it. But it is precisely this saving that leads to the fact that the tile fails against the general background.

You can remove the defect only by removing the tile and smearing it evenly, but most likely you will have to remove the entire row (if you smeared all the tiles pointwise).

By the way, spot application can cause breakage of tiles. When dry, the glue will create tension at the corners, and a cheap tile can start a cobweb.

Dips in the seams

A similar defect will occur if you poorly cleaned the seams before grouting or smeared it with too liquid composition. Eliminate this by completely removing the grout, sanding the seams and re-greasing with fresh grout.

Tiles of different lengths

Even within the same batch, tiles may vary in length or width. Let this error be minimal, but on the wall it will become noticeable. Therefore, finishers take tiles from different boxes in one row. So it is more likely to hide the calibration error.

If the tile is already laid, take it out and pick up another one whose size matches the neighboring tiles.

• If patterned, more decorative ones are inserted among your tiles, then mark the place of their landing on the wall in advance with a pencil so that you do not forget about it during the installation process.
• First lay out the patterns on the floor in the next room to see if you like this arrangement of tiles. It will be too late to change the design on the wall.
• When laying tiles, do not press hard. The solution should not come out in the seams. If this happens, remove the excess immediately.
• It is only necessary to deepen the tile with a rubber mallet to avoid chipping.
• When facing the walls, wait for the 1st row to dry and then lay out the second. This will make it easier to level the plane, and the bottom tile will not slip.
• If the fugue of the desired color was not in the store, buy a white one and add a drop of dye of the desired color to it. Just decide right away how many drops and how much of the dry mixture you will add, so that when you re-knead there is no difference in shade.

Armed with a level, a rubber mallet and crosses to level the seams, you can carry out finishing work quickly and efficiently.

The first steps in laying tiles are best done not in the bathroom, but in a more inconspicuous room - a pantry, a kitchen (behind the furniture) to fill your hand. Bathrooms with an abundance of corners and appliances are best finished with some experience. There will be less fight, spoiled nerves and mistakes!