herringbone tile – Us Against the House

As a reminder, this is what the room looked like before we started on our quest for a master bathroom:

After a contractor roughed in the plumbing, we demo-ed the walls and trim and laid down cement board. We installed and painted the greenboard walls. And now it is time to tile the room! We got several quotes from handymen for tiling our master bathroom, and they all came in around $2,500 for labor alone. We decided to keep that money and try to do it ourselves, instead!

The first step was for Jeremy to install the heated floor pad. I’ll let him tell you how he did it in his very first GUEST APPEARANCE on this blog! Read on to hear it from his perspective:

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I watched many videos about how to install the heated floor and it seemed simple enough: just lay it down and wire it up. And it really was that easy. For example, laying the mesh has a lot of instructions: don’t put it within 6 inches of a toilet ring, don’t put it under heavy/permanent objects (like a vanity), etc. etc. One thing I tried really hard to figure out was where to put the heating element so when you’re using the toilet, your feet are nice and toasty! I even squatted over the toilet area just to see where my feet would land.

20190423_194831 — Estimating where the heated floor should go near the toilet

After laying out the mat, the instructions recommend chipping out the floor to fit the larger wires, such as the temperature senor. This was easy enough with a screwdriver and hammer.

I chipped out some of the floor for that thick black part of the wire to sit in

The sticky tape that came with the mat did not actually stick to the floor so I used a glue gun instead (also recommended in the instructions) so it won’t move when I apply the thinset.

It’s very important to remember during installation to NOT CUT THE METAL WIRE! If the wire is too long for your room, you need to use it anyway. The product comes in different sizes, so it’s important to purchase the correct size for your room. If you overbuy, you’ll have a lot of leftover wire to run around. In our case, it was only 3-4 feet and I just ran it along the shower.

I also used this nifty gadget that the manufacturer of the heated floor pad makes. It’s a $25 simple plastic device that you connect to the heated floor wiring. It makes a very loud noise if you accidentally cut a wire during installation. Basically it screams if the electric current is interrupted in any way, letting you know that you’re screwed! It’s important because if you damage the heating element as you’re installing it or tiling over it, and you don’t know about it, you won’t know it’s broken until the tile has all been installed…and then you’re just out of luck.

After the heated floor pad was installed, it was time to wire it to the thermostat to test it out. There are a LOT of wires and it was daunting, but they all have their place. There are 3 from the circuit breaker, 3 from the floor and 2 for the temperature sensor. I hooked it all up, turned on the circuit breaker and held my breath–hoping it would work! The thermostat first read the floor at 67 degrees so I cranked it up to 80. Soon enough, it was heating up to 72 degrees and I could feel the floor wasn’t cold anymore. It’s been off ever since because the instructions say to wait 4-6 weeks after the tiles are installed to use it. (Something to do with messing up the curing of the thinset and grout….something I do NOT want to mess with).

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THANK YOU JEREMY FOR YOUR FIRST EVER POST!! For those of you interested in Jeremy’s daily home renovation adventures, please follow us on Instagram @usagainstthehouse. I just gave Jeremy the password to our account and he is constantly posting to Instagram stories. Now back to installing the floor tile….

After the heated floor pad was down, it was time to install the floor tile! We selected 6” x 12” bianco carrera marble tile, and decided on a 90-degree angle herringbone pattern (which is slightly easier than the pattern we followed for the kitchen backsplash–it requires way fewer cuts in the tile).

We mixed the thinset mortar in a bucket and got to work. Being careful not to disrupt the heated floor mat, I installed the tiles on the floor. While I laid the full pieces of tile, Jeremy cut all the pieces that go around the edge of the room. We purchased a wet tile saw from Amazon to get the job done. It was the least expensive saw large enough to cut through a 12” tile on the diagonal. So far it’s worked well with our thick marble tiles.

By the end of our first night laying tile (about 2 hours of work total), we had completing a quarter of the room. By the second day, we were already much faster and better at cutting and installing the tile, and completed another quarter of the room. OR SO WE THOUGHT!

On the third day, I noticed that some of the tiles I laid on day 2 were not laying completely flat next to each other, with one or two corners popping up. This problem is called “lippage” and basically presents a permanent toe-stubbing hazard if left uncorrected. I was very frustrated to pull up the tile and try again, but that’s what we had to do! Jeremy pried off three pieces of tile and then we chipped away the thinset below to create a newly flat surface, then re-installed the tiles. Luckily, Elizabeth had volunteered to help on the third day so we got past this speedbump pretty quickly, then moved on to install more of the floor.

Predicting that we would face the same lippage problem, I purchased this tile-leveling system on the third day of installation. And it works like a charm! It seriously helps to prevent lippage and keep the floor completely flat and toe-stub free. Oh how I wish I could turn back time and start the project with these incredible little devices! Every time we laid a new tile down using the levelers, I cried out in joy at how perfectly flat and smooth they were next to their neighboring tile.

You can see the tile leveling system in action here:

Those plastic things are part of the floor leveling system

You can watch our progress over four days here:

This is what the room looks like now. Jeremy sealed the marble yesterday so it won’t easily stain. The only thing left to do is grout and then our vanity can be delivered and installed!!

A few weeks ago, we found beautiful white tiles at a store in Alexandria and I knew they were meant for our kitchen backsplash. So one Sunday, we spent all day installing the tile. The tiles are larger than a classic subway tile and have a gorgeous subtle texture to them. We considered two different patterns: herringbone or subway

Thank god Jeremy had the foresight to double check that the range hood fit between the two cabinets before we started. The hood is 41 inches wide and space between the two wall cabinets was supposed to be 42 inches. We lifted the hood into place and GUESS WHAT!? It didn’t fit! While I had a panic attack, Jeremy used his brain and discovered that the left cabinet had about half an inch of room left so he simply slid it over some more. CRISIS AVERTED, let’s move on.

Before we could start the project, Jeremy had to install an outlet that the range hood will be plugged into. We had paid an electrician to “rough in” the wiring a few months ago, so yesterday Jeremy quickly installed the outlet in its place that will be hidden behind the hood.

Installing the outlet for the range hood before we begin tiling

We decided to go with a herringbone pattern instead of subway tile pattern even though subway tile is much easier and faster to install. We watched a bunch of videos online about how to install tile in a herringbone pattern and then we started to try it ourselves. The first step was to lay out all the tiles on a flat surface in the exact size and pattern we wanted them on the wall. I laid out a drop cloth to protect the floor from scratches, then started laying out the tile one by one, with 1/8-inch spacers between.

Laying out the tile one the floor in the exact pattern it will be on the wall

Laying all the tiles out and cutting the edges off

After I laid enough out, I taped and marked the edges of the wall where I’d need to make cuts. Then I used a simple tile cutter we bought at the hardware store to score and cut each tile. This tool is good for simple jobs and thin tiles, and I only accidentally broke 10 tiles the entire day.

FE7F7040-2DC4-45C5-8149-6A781BD3BE42 — There is no reason for this gratuitous picture except to show the world how CUTE my foreman is.

While I cut all the edges of the tiles, Jeremy was tasked with making the very difficult 90-degree cuts in four pieces of tile. This task is almost impossible for reasons I won’t get into, but suffice it to say Jeremy spent hours trying and only managed to complete two out of the four cuts we needed. Oh well, we decided to move on and just call a handyman to come over with a more advanced tile cutter to make the last few cuts we needed.

Trying to cut a 90-degree angle into the tile….basically an impossible task that I gave to Jeremy. Many tiles were sacrificed

To start installing the tiles, we smeared pre-mixed thinset onto the wall using a notched trowel. HOT TIP: If you want to install your own backsplash, be sure to pick the correct color thinset! Thinset mortar comes in either gray or white and the color only matters if you want white grout lines. We selected white thinset for this reason.

Applying the first bit of thinset onto the walls. PROTECT YOUR CABINETS WITH TAPE!!

We also smeared a thin layer of thinset onto the back of each tile (which is deliciously called “back-buttering” in the industry) and then stuck each tile into place on the wall. We tried to use spacers but gravity kept winning and they kept falling to the ground. We managed to stick some spacers in but definitely not as many as we probably should have.

We of course ran into some problems during installation (namely some of the pre-cut tile didn’t perfectly fit along the ceiling or walls) but we were able to quickly cut new tile pieces that fit better and it all worked out. The entire project took us about 9 hours, including the freak-out about the range hood, installing the outlet, and spending a lot of time on those difficult right-angle cuts. If I were to do the project again, I would not pre-cut ALL the tiles, but rather just one of the straight edges. This is because some of my cuts were a 1/4-inch or 1/2-inch wrong, which could be avoided by just measuring once they are on the wall.

A few days later, after our handyman cut the last few tricky pieces, we grouted in Brilliant White and then BOOM our backsplash was finished!

Or so we thought…there was a slight haze left of the tiles from the grout, so Jeremy used grout haze remover (because there’s a product for everything), and wiped each tile clean. Then he applied a thin line of white caulk on the edges of the backsplash, where the tiles meet the cabinets and countertop.

Because we had tried to squeeze the range hood into place when the cabinets were too close together, I had to do some paint touchups where we had scratched the cabinets. The thinset and grout also left ugly marks on our cabinets, so if you plan to do your own backsplash, protect your cabinets with painters tape! I wish we had.

Then we moved on to install the range hood. Jeremy cut a hole through the ceiling drywall and pulled the duct through. He installed the support screws directly in the tile for the hood to sit on. Then Elizabeth came over and helped up lift the hood into place. Jeremy screwed a third screw directly through the back side of the hood (just for extra support because why not?). Then he connected the duct and tested it out! It worked, but made an annoying rattling sound when he turned it on. He fiddled around with some screws and thankfully it stopped making that strange noise.

The last step was putting the chimney and crown molding over the duct and VOILA! We have a fully functioning range hood! It’s SO big and it really pulls the kitchen together. We love it. Now that ACTUAL last step to completing the kitchen is to paint those last two dastardly cabinet doors.

Tag: herringbone tile

Tiling the floor in the master bathroom

Finishing our kitchen backsplash