Tiling......where to start?

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moneyhoney

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I want to get my bathroom re-tiled and have no idea where to start. Do I buy tiles myself & then find a tiler or get a tiler to bring tiles? Where would I find a tiler? Can anyone recommend one? And any recommendations on tile shops?

Thanks in advance.
 
Always start tiling from the centre of the room. Mark the centre with a chalk line from two walls. You can slightly offset the centre tile to be in-line with a feature of your bathroom. Once you've done this correctly, the rest is pretty easy. Don't mix too much adheasive at once because it can start setting within half an hour.

Reader's Digest DIY book is a great place to find out how to tile a room, complete with illustrations.

With regard to tile shops, they always seem to have a half price tiles sale.
 
moneyhoney,

you buy the tiles yourself (in my experience). However, you may want to consider having the tiler supply the adhesive and grout. I already had these when I got my ensuite tiled and apparently they weren't as good as the ones the tiler supplies himself. I was also left with the remains to dispose of. I'm going to let the tiler supply these for the next lot of tiling.

Also be careful with your choice of tile colour. For my small ensuite without natural light I would have been better going for white, but you live and learn (also learned the hard way that tiling gets very boring very quickly if your heart's not in it).

I can't offer a specific recommendation (don't know where you are), but would suggest word of mouth is a great way to find a good tiler. A good tiler will make cheaper tiles look better, but a bodged job will ruin the nicest tiles (see above!!).

Good luck!
 
It can often be best to get the tiler first as they can have contacts in certain suppliers and possibly get you a discount or tell you where to go for best value/quality.

One bit of advice I would give is to always buy extra tiles because if you want to make small changes to the rooms not having replacement tiles can be a pain which is a problem that we have run into.

You may find something useful in the key post on Tiling.
 
We bought the tiles and all the other stuff in advance in one of those tile warehouses. There was a sale on with the tiles.

The tiler couldn't believe how much we paid for the adheasive and grout. He said that these could be bought for literally 1/2 price in somewhere like Atlantic.


Murt
 
I agree with Murt10, buy you grout/adheasive/rims from atlantic/woodies/4-homes they are usually half the price that tile stores charge, thats how they mke there money, have a sale on the tiles but charge double for the other bits needed. On estore in cork i bought from wanted to charge 30 euro's for the same bag i'd buy in 4 home for half the price...always shop around..you'd be surprised what you can save..
 
Is this really the case with adhesives in Woodies et al? I'm very surprised I've always found Woodies/ Atlantic etc way over on price for most things...............
 
umop3p!sdn said:
Always start tiling from the centre of the room. Mark the centre with a chalk line from two walls. You can slightly offset the centre tile to be in-line with a feature of your bathroom. Once you've done this correctly, the rest is pretty easy. Don't mix too much adheasive at once because it can start setting within half an hour.

Reader's Digest DIY book is a great place to find out how to tile a room, complete with illustrations.

With regard to tile shops, they always seem to have a half price tiles sale.
Click to expand...

Actually its more important to start tiling in terms of hieght rather than location. You need to establish a straight line on the wall maybe 3/4 of the height of a tile off the ground, but at such a hieght so that you do not have a cut to make at the top that is less than 1/3 of the tile. It gets seriously hard to cut small slivers of tiles. Of course thats also the case in terms of how far from each wall you start so think of it like this...pick a point such that you don't have a tiny piece of tile to cut at the top, bottom or either side.
 
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