Facing the floor with tiles, the choice of materials and the necessary tools, leveling and marking the base, the technology of installing the coating and grouting the joints between its elements. The content of the article:
- Tile selection
- Installation tools
- Selection of glue and grout
- Base leveling
- Floor markings
- Laying technology
Tiling is an excellent flooring solution, and here's why. In any room, the floor is exposed to the greatest external influences, so the cladding material must have high strength and resistance to abrasion. Due to the fact that floors need periodic wet cleaning, their waterproofing and resistance to chemicals are also extremely important. In addition, as an element of the interior, it should be in harmony with the decoration of the ceiling and walls, creating with them the overall style of the room. You will learn about the correct choice of material and how to lay tiles on the floor by reading this article.
Features of the choice of floor tiles
When choosing floor tiles, it is imperative to take into account the load on the floor, which in turn depends on the type of room. The tiles are divided into five classes in terms of strength. Suitable material for the flooring is class III-V. Such tiles should be massive, impact-resistant and have a thickness of 8 to 13 mm. In rooms with more traffic, a thicker one is used than, for example, in a toilet.
The floor covering must not be slippery. Therefore, for its manufacture, you should choose a ribbed tile or matte, which has corundum sputtering. For kitchens, a matte finish is more commonly used, as textured tiles are more difficult to clean. For floor cladding in the corridor, bathroom or living room, you can choose any one with anti-slip properties.
Floor tiles must be moisture resistant. This parameter is indicated in its technical characteristics, which it is recommended to familiarize yourself with before purchasing. If documentation is not available, moisture resistance can be determined empirically. To do this, you just need to moisten the tiles. Its back should not absorb moisture.
Kitchen tiles should be highly resistant to household detergents, as splashes of grease and oils will often fall on the floor during cooking, which will have to be removed with alkaline agents. For the floor in the hallway, you should not buy soiled tiles, because they often walk on it in dirty shoes. It is recommended to make the flooring of verandas, terraces and other objects located in the open air from ceramic granite. Such tiles with their characteristics and appearance are almost identical to natural stone, therefore, they are able to withstand any stress. Floor tiles should not have cracks, sagging and chips. When choosing, it is highly recommended to apply the tiles in pairs to each other with planes and end parts to make sure that there are no gaps between them. The tight fit of the ceramic floor tiles attests to their high quality. In this case, it is not at all necessary to check all the packaging with the goods. This can be done selectively, and then make a decision to buy it.
During the installation process, tiles often require trimming at the junctions, they can crack or be damaged in any other way. Therefore, it should be bought with a margin. If we also take into account the marriage, then this will be 10-15% of the coverage area.
As for the size of the tiles, they must be chosen depending on the area of the room. Large tiles visually reduce it, for small rooms a small one is suitable - 100x100 mm. Classic square tiles are easier to install. When choosing curly products, do not forget about borders, baseboards and corners. For these places, there are samples of a special form.
Floor tiles should provide a color contrast to the walls. In addition, it should be borne in mind that a light glossy cladding can visually expand a tight space, and its matte dark color can slightly reduce, but make a spacious room more sophisticated. Important! It is necessary that the purchased floor tiles are all from the same delivery batch. Otherwise, some differences in color shade and even texture are possible.
Floor Tile Tools
The preparatory stage of laying tiles on the floor includes the choice of tools, glue mixture and grout, leveling the base and its marking. For floor cladding, special tools are required, which are not always available from a home craftsman, especially when such work is performed for the first time. You can always find a plastic container for mixing tile glue. A tape measure, pencil, work gloves and clean rags are also not a big problem. The situation is more complicated with other tools and devices that you have to buy. These include:
- Crosses for fixing equal gaps between tiles when laying them. They are made of plastic and have square rods. The most common sizes of crosses are 2-4 mm. In one package of such products from 200 pieces or more.
- Spatula for filling the joints between tiles. Its blade is made of dense rubber, which excludes damage to the surface of the tile during its finishing.
- Building level. It controls the installation of tiles in one horizontal plane.
- Tile cutter. Its name does not need comments, but with the help of such a device, the edges of the tiles, when trimmed at the junctions, are smooth, and there are no chips on the outer coating of the products, which is impossible when using a grinder for the same purposes.
- Electric drill equipped with a mixer attachment. You will need it to prepare tile glue.
- Notched trowel. With its help, glue is applied to the base and its leveling. The blade of such a spatula is made of metal, has a width of 250 mm and square teeth on the working edge with dimensions of 6 mm.
- Rubber mallet. This is a hammer for leveling tiles as they are laid.
Selection of glue and grout for tiles on the floor
Tile adhesive is available in the form of a working or dry mixture. In the first case, plastic bulk buckets serve as packaging for it, and in the second - bags. It is more profitable to buy a dry mixture. It is cheaper, and you can turn the powder into building glue at home. In addition, it is convenient to knead the dry mixture in parts in accordance with the pace and schedule of facing work.
Tile adhesive can be replaced with construction cement-sand mortar. With its help, in the process of laying the coating, flaws in the base in the form of small bumps and depressions are eliminated. Working with such a composition is gross, but it is cheap. A good option is a combination of high-quality cement, sand and powder of a construction adhesive mixture. As a result of this combination of materials, an easy-to-use, economical and reliable tile mortar can be obtained.
Fugue is a special compound designed to fill the joints between the laid elements of the floor covering. Its other name is "grout", which can mean both the mixture itself and the action with it. When choosing a fugue, you should know that the contrasting composition will emphasize the shape of each tile and make the cladding bright. And the grout, matched to the tone of the coating, will give it a solid effect. The width of the joints depends on the design solution, the quality of the tiles and can be from two to twenty millimeters.
For residential buildings, epoxy or cement grouts are used, for industrial - compositions based on furan resins. All of them differ in terms of service life and varying degrees of resistance to external influences. Epoxy fugues are the most reliable and professional type of materials. To work with them, high speed and accuracy are required. Not every tiler, and even more so a beginner, will be able to process the seams with such a grout with high quality. Therefore, it will be better if you opt for a cement grout.
Leveling the sub-floor under the tiles
Tiled flooring requires an almost perfectly flat base. Therefore, the appearance and strength of the future flooring depends on its preparation. First of all, the surface must be cleaned of debris and dirt, and then check it in different directions with a flat two-meter rail and a building level. If the deviations of the floor from the horizontal plane exceed 3 mm per 1 running meter, you will have to perform a leveling screed along the base. Before installing it, you should carefully inspect the concrete surface of the floor. If it has influxes of building mixtures or significant cracks, then you need to get rid of them. It is possible to remove the sagging with a "grinder", and the cracks need to be cut, cleaned of concrete crumbs and thoroughly filled with cement mortar.
If the tiles are to be laid in a room with a high level of humidity, in the bathroom, for example, before applying the screed, the base should be coated with waterproofing. Bituminous mastic can be used as a material. It is applied with a brush, but the floor surface should be primed before coating to ensure adhesion and remove dust.
The floor screed can be carried out using traditional mortar over lighthouses or by pouring the surface with a self-leveling mixture. The second way is much easier. After the screed has dried, it is also necessary to apply a layer of primer to it using a roller, spray or brush. It will qualitatively improve the adhesion of the tile adhesive to the substrate when tiling the floor.
The wooden base for the tiles is leveled in the same way. First of all, the wooden floor should be checked for strength. Rotten boards need to be replaced, the cracks must be filled with wood putty and the surface waterproofed. After that, you can perform a cement screed or lay the floor for leveling with moisture-resistant plywood with a thickness of at least 12 mm. Its fastening should be done with nails or screws to the floor joists.
Floor marking for installation of tiles
Tiles can be laid in three main ways. The first scheme is "seam to seam". It works best for large tiles. At the same time, its rows are located in parallel.
Diagonal mounting is the second method. In this case, the rows of cladding are laid in relation to the lines of the walls at an angle of 45 °. This scheme allows you to mask the unevenness of the structures using cut tiles, which are located at the edges of the flooring.
The third scheme is staggered tile laying. It is made of rectangular floor tiles and looks like a brick wall. Each of these schemes is good in its own way. It is important that the chosen method of installing the tiles on the floor matches the overall design of the room.
Having chosen a laying scheme, we proceed to marking the floor. The most technologically advanced version of this process is the use of computer programs created for this purpose. They make it possible to see the final result immediately. It will be clear what the floor pattern looks like, how many tiles are in the row, and which ones require trimming. But the installation scheme for the coating can also be drawn on paper, this is not essential.
In practice, this work looks like this. First, you need to dismantle the door trims and baseboards, and then make marks in the middle of the base of each wall. Then the painting cord must be pulled between opposite marks and released sharply. After touching the floor, the cord will leave imprints on it of the transverse and longitudinal centerline of the future coating.
If you plan to lay the material diagonally, you should draw two more lines connecting opposite corners of the floor. Naturally, the point of intersection of all lines should be only one and designate the center of the floor or its section, if the room has external corner projections.
Focusing on the axial lines of the floor, you need to lay out tiles on it without mortar in order to pre-form a coating pattern. The initial version of its installation at this stage of work can be corrected: areas of the floor visible from the threshold should be covered with solid tiles, and the trim should be hidden under the room furniture or plan its location near the doorway. If you are satisfied with the layout, the tiles can be numbered and removed from the floor.
Floor tile laying technology
It is recommended to perform tiled flooring at an air temperature of + 20 ° C and a humidity of 60%. These are optimal conditions, if they are observed, the glue under the coating will harden within 24 hours. At temperatures below + 5 ° C, the process can take a week.
Work should begin with the preparation of tile glue. All recommendations on this issue are in the instructions located on the packaging of the material. In the required proportion, the dry glue mixture must be poured into water and carefully moved with the mixer nozzle of an electric drill. The mass should turn out to be homogeneous and plastic. You should not do a lot of solution right away, as it thickens quickly enough.
Laying floor tiles should start from the most visible corner of the room and gradually move towards the doorway as you work. Tile adhesive is applied to the substrate and leveled with a notched trowel. The design of the tool makes it possible to maintain the same layer thickness in the area of the future facing. The area of the base covered with glue for laying a certain number of tiles should not exceed 1 m2.
Then, in turn, each element of the coating must be laid on glue and aligned in a plane, starting from the center of the tile and moving to its edges. The horizontal laying of the material should be checked with a building level and adjusted, if necessary, by lightly tapping with a rubber mallet. Excess glue on the edges of the face of the tile must be removed and used in the process of applying a new portion of the mixture to the base.
In addition to being horizontal, all tiles must be flush. If any tile is higher than the previous one, you need to press it down a little, and if it is lower, add glue under it. The same level of adjacent tiles is controlled by a ruler or rule. To do this, the tool must be laid, resting it immediately on both tiles laid side by side. There should be no gaps between their common plane and the ruler. To make the seams between the tiles the same, you need to carefully insert plastic crosses into them, two on each side of the cladding element.
In general, the general laying algorithm is as follows: applying glue, pressing the tiles, checking the horizontal and general level, removing excess glue and installing separating elements. Cut tiles are laid last.
After a day, the plastic crosses should be removed from the cladding. After the adhesive has completely cured, grouting of the laid coating can be started. Under natural room conditions, the adhesive layer hardens within 24-36 hours. This process can be accelerated by turning on space heating.
The tile grout joint must be kneaded to the consistency of a thick paste, and then, using a rubber spatula, fill all the joints between the laid tiles with it. Excess mixture from the surface of the cladding should be immediately removed with the same tool.
After half an hour, the grout will dry out a little. After that, it is necessary to soak a sponge in warm water and remove small fugue residues from the surface of the tile with it. After an hour, the finished tile covering must be wiped with a hard sponge and a dry flannel cloth. Until the grout has completely hardened, you should not place heavy furniture in the room.
Important! It is better not to delay the washing of the tiles. Later, it will be very difficult to remove the dried composition from the cladding without damaging its surface. How to lay tiles on the floor - watch the video:
Do-it-yourself laying of tiles on the floor takes a total of about a month, starting from the preparation of the base and ending with the start of the full operation of the room. If you adhere to all the terms and technology of facing, its result will delight guests and owners of the house for many years. We wish you fruitful work!
