In our latest curbless shower project, we ended up using subway tile. And what made
this a little bit challenging is the window. So in this video we’re going to give you
tips on how we started to tile this shower wall using subway tile up to the bottom of
that window. It was critical to get the first row of tile
absolutely level. So we put our laser level to the top of the tile, and then we used really
great latex modified thinset mortar. As you can see here, we put a dab of it on the wall,
and it’s not sagging. This indicates that it’s mixed properly, and it’s a great
thinset. So we used our directional troweling here.
We set our first tile, and we centered it on the wall in this particular shower. And
then we checked every tile to make sure that the top of the tile lined up with the laser
level. And if it didn’t, we had to back cut it using our angle grinder and diamond
blade. So in this case we’re just making sure that
these tiles meet up with the curvature of the sower pan, and we’re cleaning the grout
joints as we go with our brush. So here, we’re just checking to make sure that these tiles
meet up with the laser level. We’re cutting them with the CGX 115 diamond blade by Montolit,
and we’re back buttering these tiles with the flat side of the trowel. This really helps
out with the 95% coverage that we need for this wet area per the TCNA.
So as you can see here, we’re just making our way across this first row of tile, back
cutting them, and making sure that we have our expansion and contraction joint between
those tiles and the shower pan as well. So again, that’s about 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch.
So we’re just getting the measurement for the last two tiles here that flank either
side of this first row, cutting them to size with the angle grinder, and then back buttering
them. You can also use a wet saw, but we just found that it would be easier to use our angle
grinder in this particular case. So we’re just cleaning the tiles as we go to make sure
we don’t have any thinset build-up between the grout joints.
The expansion and contraction joint on the main wall will be hidden by the tile on the
plumbing wall, so we wanted to indicate that. Now, we’re just centering this tile over
top of our first course, and we’re making sure that it’s absolutely center using our
measuring tape and our laser level. And we’re just adding 1/16 horseshoe shims between every
tile so that we have a consistent grout joint. You can also add the shims on the vertical
grout joints, but we didn’t; we just eyed it up in this particular case. And we’re
feeling for any lippage as we go; that’s really important because you don’t want
lippage for these little tiles. And it didn’t really make sense to use a leveling system.
We’re getting the measurement here for the smaller pieces. And one way that we saved
time on this project was batch processing these little cuts using our DeWALT wet saw,
which, by the way, is our favorite wet saw. And that sped up the process of tiling the
first several rows of this subway tile shower. Again, we’re just continuing with our directional
troweling. We’re setting the first tile, making sure that it’s centered on the previous
row. And then we’re going up the wall using our horseshoe shims to get our consistent
grout joint. So again, this is our methodology. And we
did this the entire way up the wall till we met with the window in the shower. Unfortunately,
the window could not be removed, so we had to work around that, and we’ll give you
some tips on how we did the planning. So again, we’re just making sure that our
grout joint is still there between this row of tile and our plumbing wall. You need to
have that expansion and contraction joint. And we set our laser level on the top course
as we went up the wall to make sure that it continued to stay level.
So we’re at our top row here. Just take a look at what this looks. This just looks
like a pretty good position to me because by the time I put my tile on here, we’ll
have almost ¾ of a tile. So that’s a pretty good position. The large tile will be coming
up against here; it’ll look nice. So we’re going to go ahead and install our bottom plate.
Or actually, I take that back. We’re just going to allow this to stick up past our tile
proud of it so that we can apply thinset underneath it here and fill in the pieces then beat up
with our bullnose afterwards. This is all pretty flat, but it’s just going to be easier
to have uniform cut pieces since this is all level, and just allow enough for thinset.
You can always build up your tile on top of here with additional thinset to come out even
with this. So let’s just make this 2 ½ inches. We’ll
make this whole row 2 ½ inches, place our bullnose, and then fill in our sill afterwards.
So we did cut down the height of the tiles that are directly underneath this window,
and that was done so that we could fit the bullnose in like so. So we just centered the
bullnose on that last course of tile, and we continued to use our horseshoe shims. And
the reason why we’re doing our smaller tile just underneath the window is you won’t
really notice the difference when we go outside the window width. So again, we’re just doing
this underneath the bullnose so that we can make the bullnose look good.
Again, we’re just going to make this bullnose proud and then fill in thinset to make this
work. Let me just see where we will be. Yeah, so we’ll be good here. So we’ll have basically
our full tile... we’ll have a pretty good size tile on our opposite end here aligning
with this. So we’ll basically have like a 2 ½ inch piece going up along here, which
will look good. Again, say if this was an inch, I would just bring this out a little
bit further and try to get a bigger piece against here. But since we’re like with
almost a half a tile there, it’s going to look pretty good. So we’ll just put our
laser on our bullnose pieces to make sure that that stays level. Put it up here. So
we’ll basically be just notching this. So 2 ½ inches and then notching down.
We always use a laser level. But in particular, when you’re tiling around a window like
this, it’s really important as you can see here, because it helps that subway tile be
level. But also your bullnose be plumb with the window so that when you’re climbing
the wall, you know that your bullnose is going to continue to stay aligned, and that will
give you a consistent spacing on the walls that flank the windows.
So as you can see, we’re just filling in the rest of the tile on that last row that’s
just below the bullnose. We’re going to be climbing the wall and maintaining that
pattern. But again, our bullnose is nice and plumb, and we just kept our laser on it as
we went up along the window edge. So here, we’re maintaining our pattern.
And yes, we have smaller tiles on each side, but we felt that that didn’t look bad. And
as you can see here, we went the entire way above the window, maintaining that pattern.
And we have our bullnose that picture frames the window.
Inside the window, we did have a consistent grout joint and left about a 1/16 inch between
the tile and the window. We’re really happy with how this curbless
shower turned out, obviously. The subway tile’s a classic look. But overall, that, combined
with the frameless glass shower doors really makes it look great.
We’re going to put the rest of the video showing how we tiled this curbless shower
into the Bathroom Repair Tutor video library. You can click here to check out the video
library. It’s really a great resource. And if you’re redoing a bathroom or you do bathroom
remodels, they can be really, really helpful. Thanks for watching this video, and we’ll
see you in the next one.