Creative Tiling

16 November 08

What do you do when you have floor tiling needs and the father-in-law shows up unannounced with a mismatch batch of tile left over from a construction project somewhere? First you say thanks and help unload the truck, then you get creative.

My wife and I are undergoing a number of projects in our new digs, and a great deal of tiling is involved with several of them. I estimate no less than seven tiling projects when all said and done.

To a modest extent I understand the tools and materials of tile work and can lay some plates down if left to my own, but I am not a tile master by any means. As it happens, my wife’s father is a professional tiler. Having done tile work all his life you could even say he’s a skilled artisan. Combine that with the fact his daughter is my wife and the result is we have lots of tiling help when the time comes. Indeed, now having helped him with a couple of projects so far, it’s clear I just become the guy who carries heavy things from point A to point B and then sweeps up afterward.

Half of our tile projects are finishing rooms in the basement that were unfinished by the previous owners. Besides the garage, our basement (or cave, as it’s called in French), is composed of a furnace room, a laundry room, and two other rooms that will become my workshop and study, respectively. The latter three all need finished (starting with tile work) and the first to get attention was the workshop.

Tile Reality

As you may be aware, tiles come in a great variety of shapes, styles, size, color, quality and of course, cost. Being tile is pretty permanent once laid, you want to be sure you like what you’re laying. My wife and I appreciate this and we’re generally willing to spend a little extra to get something that appeals to our aesthetic sensibilities, but one thing is for sure, good quality (and attractive) tile is not cheap. If you have a sizable area to cover, you can expect to pay a premium if you have the aesthetic bug.

That said, we are in economic times, and these are basement dwellings after all, so we were not aiming for anything too fancy in this case. Then one day the expert (I’ll call him the chef, as he likes to joke that way) showed up unannounced with a bunch of tiles left over from other projects. The tiles were meant for the floors of the workshop and study, and the chef had quickly calculated there was enough to cover them both.

At first I wasn’t too keen on this because even though these are basement rooms and the tiles were free, I didn’t want the floors to end up looking like patchwork quilts, but the man had already loaded his truck (with bad shoulder and all) and hauled them to our place, so what do you do. I thanked him and unloaded it all into the garage.

The tiles were all the same size, which was good, but there were five different styles and colors of varying numbers each, which was bad. For about a week I pondered the situation and things didn’t seem promising. My wife and I started coming to terms with having to tell the chef the project leftovers weren’t going to work.

Floor Pattern Inspiration

Then one evening I thumbed through one of the many issues of Maisons we have in the house and saw a tiled floor design consisting of two, high-contrasting colors set in ribbon-like patterns. It was super cool!

Remembering that two of the more numerous colors in our miscellaneous batch were dark green and off-white, I got out the tape measure, paper and pencil and headed down for some quick calculations. The workshop was the larger room (which isn’t saying much), and it turned out 108 tiles (at 33cm2)would cover it. It also turned out we had just enough of the green and off-white colors to make a pretty good balance with a lean towards the green.

Back upstairs, I fired up the MacPro, flipped on Word and quickly made three columns of table grids matching the actual tile grid needed for the room, which was 9×12. Using the design I saw in the magazine to get rolling, I started playing around with some looping patterns by filling in cells with black, but unlike in the magazine picture my loops were looking more like the letters d, b, q and p (Figure 1).

Floor tile grid designs

Figure 1. A series of floor grids initiated with loop patterns.

To kill the letter effect, I trimmed the tails and played with more shapes in the middle region. These started to get interesting (Figure 2).

Floor tile grid designs

Figure 2. A series of floor grids playing with more middle region shapes.

I then tried some alternate approaches, including diagonal symmetry, reverse contrast (in this case reverse of grid #4), and no symmetry at all, as shown in this last series, respectively (Figure 3).

Floor tile grid designs

Figure 3. Three different floor grids showing diagonal symmetry, reverse contrast (reverse of grid #4), and asymmetry, respectively.

I didn’t care for the reverse contrast too much, but I thought the diagonal and asymmetrical patterns were pretty sweet. I also liked grid #5 (Figure 2), and that’s the one my wife nodded to as well so that became the model for the workshop floor.

I decided to swap in two extra dark tiles in the chosen grid. I then printed a large version of the grid on A4 paper for the chef to use as reference (Figure 4).

Final floor tile grid used

Figure 4. The floor grid pattern
ultimately used.

Prior to showing the design to the chef, he had suggested going with a checkerboard pattern (yawn). Upon seeing what I had in mind, he first asked if I did the design on a computer (hilarious), and then went through every measure, calculation and tile count I already did to confirm, I guess, that I knew what I was doing. If I was in his shoes, I would have done the same thing. In the end, I think he was impressed by the fact someone brought an original idea to the table.

Getting Real

The chef steps in at this point, while I just take the occasional bad picture.

The first step was mixing up some watery glue and spreading that all over the cement floor with a squeegee. That was in preparation of pouring a rubbery cement-like mixture the consistency of thin cake batter, the purpose being to level out the rough surface of the raw cement floor. The mixture is intentionally thin enough to let gravity do its thing; all you really have to do is help spread it out and tap out any bubbles that appear. That sat for a couple of days undisturbed and hardened into an oddly firm but flexible crust (Figure 5).

Figure 5. The workshop floor with dry layer of flexy-leveler and initial chalk lines snapped down.

After that, it’s just a matter of laying the tiles according plan (Figure 6).

Floor tiles being laid

Figure 6. Following the grid design and nearly finished.

Filling-in the grout. (Figures 7 and 8).

Figure 7. The starting end of a freshly-grouted floor. Is that a skull? A robot gorilla? Odd, and totally unintentional.

Figure 8. Following the grid design and nearly finished.

And cleaning up aftwards.

This room will then get painted a light green, and thereafter I begin the process of outfitting, which will include:

  • A thick, hardwood bench that runs the length of at least one wall (maybe two),
  • a large area of perforated wall panel for hanging hand tools,
  • ceiling to floor shelving for bigger items such as power tools (etc.), and
  • a nook to park the portable DeWalt table saw (if that beauty gets purchased), which I’ll need to roll into the garage and back each time it’s used.

I suspect this room will also serve as my quiet retreat with the laptop at times until the the neighboring study is put together.

  1. teles  ·  17 November 08

    Hello! Congratz for the home! Hope all your family will have good time!

    Nice work with the grid, looks very nice, but will be difficult to play chess :D

  2. Destry   ·  18 November 08

    Thanks, Teles!

    Ah, yes, traditional chess maybe, but I have my own rules at chez Wion.