Friday, September 10, 2010

So here's a tip to help with your stackable tile installations.

What I mean about "stackable tile" is tile that is stacked on top of each other. These particular tiles have a lug on the sides to create a very small grout joint. The problem with strackable tile is that they are not always the exact same size. So, after you stack up several rows of tile one row will be a little longer or shorter than the ones next to them. With such a thin grout joint, it doesn't take very long before the intersection is no longer a true plus and stops looking symmetric. Imagine going several feet and things go all to hell.

The farther away from your starting point the worse it gets. So in order to minimize the indifference here are two things that will help.

Begin in the center of the wall and work from the center towards the edges. In doing such, you now have cut the distance in half for things to start getting misaligned. Secondly, here is an old timers tip that I was taught by an old timer some twenty five years ago or so.

When the tiles are glazed at the manufacturing facility the travel along on a conveyor belt to get sprayed with the glaze. This causes over spray on two opposite sides of the tile and none, or very little on the opposing edges. It's easy to see if you grab a hand full of tile and look at the edges. Some are clean and others have over spray on them.

When I start to install from the center line I start by sorting by hand all the over spray stacked in the same direction. If I begin this way then, hopefully, the rows of tile will "grow" at the same pace. As you continue farther away from your starting point, (center line), eventually it will come to a time if you go very far, that some adjustments need to take place. So here's the final trick.

If you have a row that is getting progressively shorter than the others you can install the next tiles using the over sprayed sides stacked together and the over spray will act as microscopic shim and eventually that short row will catch up.

http://www.customtouchtile.com/


The opposite also applies. If you need to shrink a row, use the clean edges stacked. against each other. So by using stacks of growing and shrinking tiles as you need them you can adjust your grout lines to stay straight with nice intersections through out.

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