Renovation project - How to tile a kitchen floor

Renovation project - How to tile a kitchen floor

The next few days are a flurry of activity, the kitchen is stripped entirely, the new units are removed and you can finally see the lovely tiled floor that I spent months scrubbing by hand, I enjoy it for approximately ten minutes before we begin to lay the new tiles.

It is a little bit heartbreaking until I see how nice the new tiles are going to look. This is one of the things that you do have to be aware of, you may have an idea of what you want but sometimes it just won’t work. When we had decided to keep the tiles we were also keeping the old partition wall between the hallway and the kitchen, with this gone there is a big step from the hall down into the kitchen which would require covering and also the hallway would be on show and the tiles are not there!

When the mains drains were connected, they used the hallway and we now have a long strip all the way along it.

But the biggest tip here is to always look on the bright side (otherwise you may just sit in a corner and cry, lots!!!!!) the bright side is we get to have some fantastic black tiles that will make the kitchen look amazing, rather than having to choose a blue or orange colour scheme to go with the floor.

John starts to plan the tiles and the biggest tip here is to try to find a straight run that is in your eye line. This will make the tiles look square even in a room that does not have one straight wall!!!!!

The tiles go down relatively easily, and it is one of the few periods of time that the air is not blue around us.

Try to keep the tiles as clean as possible whist you are putting them down but do not stand on them! Once this is all done the floor must be left for a minimum of 24 hours for the adhesive to set (the longer the better especially in a cold damp house).

Once the tiles were set it is time to grout them, first is the cleaning to get the dust off and I could really see what they were going to look like, I’m getting excited all over again just writing this!

Then it’s back to reality with the horrible job of scraping the joints, how much time will I have to spend on my hands and knees on this floor? Once scraped we can add the grout and again it is 24 hours before we can use the floor.

So far this has meant not being able to use the kitchen for 3 days and nights, luckily we have good friends here and 2 of those evenings have been spent elsewhere, and both places are better cooks than me, I’m beginning to think having no kitchen is not such a bad thing!

Top tips

• Empty the room
• Make sure the floor is clean and free from any bits or debris
• Find a straight line that you will see when you come into the room (there’s not much point finding a straight line that can only be seen from a certain angle that nobody will ever stand at!)
• Do not mix too much adhesive (it will only last so long and it doesn’t take much time to make more if you need it)
• Keep the laid tiles as clean as possible
• Do NOT stand on the tiles once they are in place
• Leave the floor for at least 24 hours before grouting
• Scrape the joints to ensure that there is enough room for the grout to be added
• Clean as much grout off as you can whilst you are doing it