Okay, so I wanted to give you 5 tips on installing a….
In this particular shower, obviously, it’s curbless.
Figured it would be easier to explain after we have the tile installed.
But number one is always to start your layout at the most visible area of the shower—wherever
you think that your eye is going to be caught.
So if you had a tub, look at the front of the tub.
If you’re in a shower—like this is the back wall of the room—I felt that the most
visible area of the bathroom is going to be the shower.
So we started our hexagonal tile from the back shower wall, starting with basically
the half-pattern along with the room.
And when you have a bathroom that has a vanity on the other side that takes up the entire
area, you have a little bit more wiggle room.
It doesn’t matter what’s underneath the vanity.
So you can start from one side of the room and work to the other and not care about the
end result underneath the vanity.
So tip #1 is to start at the most visible area of the room.
In this case, it was the shower.
We felt that starting at the end shower wall was going to be the most visible part of the
shower.
So we started our pattern from there and worked our way towards the vanity.
So tip #2 was symmetry on either side of the bathroom, making sure that you have at least
fuller tile on either side of the shower and trying to eliminate having small slivers—basically
diamonds—at the edge.
So trying to have a fuller tile like this where the wall tile coming down won’t create
any type of small diamonds.
So symmetry is very important; just as important as starting on your most visible wall.
So tip #3, on hexagonal tile specifically… now having six sides, definitely the more
challenge to keep all these grout lines even.
You’ll definitely find that it’s pretty frustrating to have all six sides to be even.
But what will help you with that is, for number one, using a good spacer.
We like these horseshoe shims for that.
And on this particular floor, I didn’t use this on every single one; just where I needed
help squeezing things over.
But what really did help were these seam clips.
They come in a variety of different colors, dictating different size tile to use.
So make sure when you look at a seam clip, you make sure that, first off, you have the
correct thickness of tile.
And then the spacer.
This little spacer on here is about 1/32nd so we ended up still using the horseshoe shims
to get out of the 16th.
But basically, this really helps with lippage.
I mean that’s what it’s primarily designed for.
But the secondary benefit of it is that once you pinch them together, it’s holding everything
in place.
So on a hexagonal tile, I found it more important to have these seam clips just holding the
whole unit together so I can shift them around and not move my grout joints.
Allowing them not to move helped out tremendously.
Because any time that I would put out a shim, it moved multiple tile over rather than forcing
one grout joint closer to the next.
So that’s tip #3: use horseshoe shims and some kind of leveling clip; this is the seam
clip.
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Really helps us out.
Keeps us motivated to keep giving you more tips.
Tip #4 is to slightly pitch the outside floor of the shower towards the drain.
And I’m just saying slightly because if you try to do too much of a slope, you’ll
end up with lippage on your tile.
So just as long as the bubble on your level is leaning towards the outside of the shower,
that’s enough pitch.
Basically just in case any runoff came out that is not still going to keep going further
into the bathroom, that’ll actually drain back towards the drain.
So that was tip #4: use a level, and pitch the outside of the floor tile just slightly
to allow water to drain towards the channel drain.
And then tip #5 is to use the spacer for the channel drain to make sure that you have the
correct distance between the inside of the shower and the outside of the shower.
This tremendously helps to get everything in line on either side of the shower to make
sure that you have the right spacing and the gap.
And we also used a Montolit hand pad.
This is basically just a diamond scrub pad.
And what this allowed us to do was to smooth out the edges of this tile since these are
basically raw edges coming towards the shower.
It’s really important to sand these down to make sure that they’re not sharp and
cannot cut your feet.
So tiling can definitely be an overwhelming process, especially if you’re doing a large
bathroom and doing intricate tile work.
I completely understand how overwhelming it can be trying to think about how am I going
to get this laid out and make this look good; I’m having a hard time with all the different
components that it takes to build the shower.
But if you take things just ones step at a time and you follow kind of the directions
that we’re kind of laying out for you to how to do things, it will fall in place.
I mean I’m not going to say it’s going to be really quick.
It’s a process, so you just have to start the process out.
Start out with your layout at the easiest part.
Use the right thinset.
Use the spacers.
Use all these tools to make it easier for you, and you’ll find that you actually enjoy
tiling as you move forward.
And then once you got to the finished product, the reward is in just being able to use that
shower and know that you built that bathroom from the ground up.
So please take a look at Bathroom Repair Tutor.
We’re here to help you find the easiest way and the most efficient way to get things
done and to do it right.