In this video we’re going to share tips on how to tile a bathroom floor if it’s
right next to a curbless shower. We’re really happy with how this bathroom floor turned
out. Whether or not you’ve got a curbless shower or a curbed shower, the tips in this
video are going to help you out on your project. For this project we used Laticrete’s 4-XLT.
It’s a modified thinset mortar. It has really good bond strength. It’s important to read
the back of the bag and follow the directions to a tee. So we added the water, and we mixed
it, and then we let it slake per the directions. We also used a Euro trowel for these 12x24
tiles, and we made sure that our floor was completely flat and level.
Now, in our prior projects and videos we used 4-XLT to bond STRATA_MAT to our wood subfloor.
So there’s STRATA_MAT on top of our wood subfloor. This is going to be an isolation
membrane that’ll help our tile not crack over time. And then we waterproofed that using
HYDRO BARRIER. So make sure to watch our prior videos.
One of the most important things for the curbless shower is to denote where you want your shower
entrance to start. So in this case it’s 30”. We have out square there. We’re making
sure that the first few tiles in the main bathroom floor area are nice and square with
that entrance area. The other thing is we’re going to offset this pattern by 1/3. So these
12x24s, we’re going to offset them by thirds, and this will help reduce tile lippage in
the main bathroom floor area, which is really important.
So as you can see here, we’re going to dry fit most of these tiles to make sure that
our pattern looks good. And we’re going to finish the tile just underneath the bathroom
door. That way the transition won’t look weird. And we also want to make sure that
we don’t have a grout joint as soon as you walk into the bathroom. Our preference is
to not have that happen. There was an air vent in the bathroom floor,
so we cut that out of our porcelain tile using the Fein WSG 7 angle grinder and the Montolit
CGX115 diamond blade for porcelain tile. Also, wear a silica dust respirator when doing this.
We like the Sundstrom dust respirator. We cut away a little of the HYDRO BARRIER
on top of the floor there. We wiped it down with a sponge to make it clean. And then we
burned the thinset into the top of the floor with the flat side of the trowel and then
use directional troweling to make sure that we had enough thinset on top of the STRATA_MAT
for our tile. When you get these tile it’s a good thing
to always look at the back and just make sure that they don’t have an arrow indicator—like
this one does. These do have arrow indicators, basically meaning that you want to have all
the tile facing in that same direction. So whichever way you want to point tile, just
keep them all going in that direction. So there must be some kind of pattern on the
front that they want to have a certain look to it. So I have all my tile sitting here,
all arrows pointing up and basically points them towards the front door. Back butter the
back side of the trowel. Because this is a wet area, the back of the
tiles are back buttered and covered about 95% to 100% with thinset mortar.
And we’re going to make sure we have our 30”. Again, I am not concerned about what
this wall looks like. I’m more concerned about staying square with my shower. So I’m
just using my square as a straight edge for it and then just making sure that I hold my
30”. We are going to be using that square throughout
this project. As you saw, Steve wiped away excess thinset against the edge of the tile
because we are going to be using T-lock clips. And we’re back buttering our large tile
and setting it in place. And it’s a good idea to, on a large format
tile, kind of just wiggle this a little bit to collapse those ridges. We are going to
use some of these leveling clips. These help keep things flush with one another.
T-lock also helps eliminate tile lippage, and that’s when one tile’s higher or lower
than the other. And the clips have the grout spacer in them. As you could see here, Steve
is using a little linoleum knife to clean out those grout joints—super important here
in this project. And we’re going to continue to check the edge of this tile that’s meeting
up with the interior portion of the shower pan just to make sure that it’s square and
30”. So again, we’re adding our clips. We’re back buttering our tiles with the
flat side of the trowel. And then we’re setting that tile and compressing all the
ridges that are on the floor and then adding the T-lock wedges. When you add the wedges,
you still need to make sure that those tiles are clean. Also that in this case the tiles
are about ¼” away from the drywall, and then we’re getting our measurement.
For this project we used basically two cutting tools: the MasterPiuma tile cutter, as you
saw there. And we’re getting our measurement here for the door jam, again leaving about
a ¼” gap between the tile and the door jam. The second tool that we are going to
use to make this L-cut is an angle grinder. So you saw the angle grinder at the beginning
of this tutorial. We’re using it throughout. And again, it’s just the Fein WSG 7 with
the Montolit CGX115 diamond blade, specifically for porcelain and ceramic. So you always want
to get that blade up to full speed before you make your cut. And again we’re just
leaving our expansion and contraction joint here between the tile and the door jam.
Here we’re adding our clips. We used three clips per elongated side of a 12x24 and two
clips for the short side, so the 12” side. So that’s our preference. And then we’re
just using our directional troweling here, back buttering, and setting the tile like
we did before. You can use your hands or you can use this
gun, whichever you need. I find myself being able to use my fingers pretty easily on here.
And again, I’m just using my square. I just really want this front edge to the shower
being nice and square and even. So when I put my mosaic tile here, it’s a nice, straight
line. So as you see here, we’re back buttering
again, trying to maintain our 95% to 100% coverage on the bottom of the tile. We’re
adding out T-lock. And there is a method to the T-lock. You definitely want all the wedges
to face the same direction if possible. And the reason why, as you go to compress the
wedge, you’re going to be compressing that grout joint together and making it nice and
tight. So here we are. We’re using the MasterPiuma
by Montolit, and we really like this tool. It’s a little bit more expensive. It’s
an investment. But if you can get one, it’s probably the best tile cutter that you can
possibly buy with your money. So there we’re just making sure that tile actually is flush
with the threshold in the doorway. We actually encountered a little bit of a problem with
that threshold entrance, but we’ll address that later in the video. And as you see here,
we’re making the wedges face the same direction. So all the wedges should be facing that same
direction so that your grout joint maintains a consistent spacing throughout the tile setting
process. So here we have to make a little moon-shaped
cut into the tile using our angle grinder. As you can see here, we’re getting our measurement
for the other tile that’s going to be adjacent to the wall. Again, we’re making our moon-shaped
cut with our angle grinder here. This one isn’t as severe, so it’s a little bit
more straight than the other one. And then we’re making our final cut on this L-shape
piece of tile that’ll go against the door jam. We’re adding our clips. We’re back
buttering this. And setting it in place. Okay, so next day you want to hit all your
T-lock clips parallel with the clip holder. So we’re just hitting along the grout joint,
and that’ll just snap it off. We highly recommend removing the clips and
the wedges the day after setting your tile. It’s so much easier to do it then. Also,
you can reuse the wedges, which is the cool thing about T-lock.
The leveling clips really help out getting everything nice and level, but it does create
a lot more cleanup. So having a little object like this 5.11 or this linoleum carpet knife
really makes it easy to scrape the joints. Probably you want to be careful with not to
tweak it or turn it sideway and chip your tile. It can sometimes be really easy to just
tweak this and easily chip the tile. If you want to see how to build a curbless
shower like the one in today’s tutorial, check out all of our videos in the Bathroom
Repair Tutor video library. We’ll put a link to it right here. They’re awesome.
Not only do we show you how to put in all the waterproofing, but we show you how to
tile step-by-step and what materials and tools make this so much easier.
Thanks for watching our video today. If you got any questions, ask them down in the comments,
and we’re happy to help you out. Take care.