How To Lay Ceramic Tile - The Worst Mistake You Can Make

The first ceramic tile installation I've ever done turned out to be a complete disaster. Hopefully after reading this, it will help prevent anyone interested in installing ceramic tile on their own, to be aware of the potential problems you can run into.

I had just bought over thirty boxes of tiles from Home Depot and had managed to deliver them to my house. The tiles I chose were rather expensive, probably not a good idea because I decided to attempt to install the ceramic tiles for the first time on my own.

The area that I was going to tile was the entire kitchen area with a countertop island in the middle. The first mistake I made was buying the fast-drying thin-set instead of the regular thin-set, and unfortunately I didn't realize this until later on. First things first, I snapped chalk lines for the layout of the room. The room wasn't square so I knew that I had to compensate for this otherwise the ceramic tiles would start to run into each other and the grout lines would begin closing on each other.

First of all, laying out the room correctly for ceramic tile installation is one of the most important things you need to get right the first time. Everything has to be square, because if it's not, and you simply follow the walls of your home then you are going to end up with a huge expensive mess.

I failed to make sure the layout was done correctly and sure enough half way through the job, the tiles started to close together. At that point the thin-set started drying underneath the tiles , and I ended up having to rip out 16 tiles so I could start over with a correct layout.

It's not rocket science to do a correct ceramic tile layout, like anything else there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. Make sure you buy chalk lines so you can snap lines to follow and get a good tape measure! I also recommend watching a video showing how to do this properly first before jumping into it on your own.

For more information on how to do ceramic tile layout correctly and to avoid making other expensive mistakes when installing ceramic tile visit How to Lay Ceramic Tile.