“WHAT!?!” you say, “The easiest is the straight lay/grid pattern!”  

When we order, we’re wanting to make sure that we have:

• Enough tile to complete our project
• Somewhere between a few extra tiles and a box left over, to save if a tile gets broken or needs to be replaced in the future (manufacturers typically rotate out/discontinue tiles about every 2 years, so you'll probably never find the exact tile again)

Aside from floating vinyl or wood floors, carpet is the easiest flooring to demo. All that you need to do is:

• take up the carpet (with residential carpet, it's typically just sitting on carpet pad underneath),
• then take up the pad (which is usually glued down, but the glue is not very strong and normally doesn't cover large sections of the pad),
• next, scrape the floor to remove the glue
• and finally, take a hammer and/or prybar and remove the tack strips from around the perimeter.

That's it! Generally, the tools that will be most useful to you will be a hammer, prybar, and a scraper. Now, sometimes carpet can be glued down and can be a huge pain to remove (indoor/outdoor carpet or commercial, for example)...this involves more scraping to remove the glue and carpet.

CAUTION: Prior to 1980, many different flooring materials had some amount of asbestos. Houses older than 1980 and vinyl are the main things to be concerned about, but in ALL demoing activities, take special care and wear a good mask or respirator!

Demoing wood is more involved than carpet or vinyl, but less than tile.  Generally, the tools that will be most useful to you will be a hammer, roofing fork or prybar, and a scraper.  Wood can be installed in 3 ways:

CAUTION: Prior to 1980, many different flooring materials had some amount of asbestos.  Houses older than 1980 and vinyl are the main things to be concerned about, but in ALL demoing activities, take special care and wear a good mask or respirator!

Unless you're demoing a floating vinyl floor (this is relatively new and EXTREMELY easy to demo - it's called LVP: Luxury Vinyl Planks or LVT: Luxury Vinyl Tiles), demoing vinyl tiles or sheets (linoleum) is more difficult than carpet, but less than wood or tile. Generally, the tools that will be most useful to you will be a scraper, hammer, and possibly, a roofing fork or prybar. Whether tiles or sheets, vinyl is removed by:

• pulling it off the floor and
• scraping the adhesive underneath to remove it (if on concrete) or
• removing the wood underlayment underneath (if over plywood), then removing or pounding in all nails/staples/screws 
  

CAUTION: The main thing to watch for and be concerned about, regarding vinyl, is the presence of asbestos. If the house is older than 1980 and if the vinyl itself OR the adhesive underneath are BLACK, there is a strong chance that it contains asbestos and you probably don't want to disturb it (at least, not without professional help). As long as it's solid and not loose or crumbly, it's usually best to properly prep the surface of it and tile over the top. In ALL demoing activities, take special care and wear a good mask or respirator!

You have a couple of options of how to tackle tile demo. One option is fastest and easiest but comes with a higher price tag.  The other option is pretty inexpensive, but is a LOT of work!

CAUTION: Prior to 1980, many different flooring materials had some amount of asbestos, including some tiles and tile adhesives.  Houses older than 1980 and vinyl are the main things to be concerned about, but in ALL demoing activities, take special care and wear a good mask or respirator!

One thing to mention, first, in this area: installing tile is a “veneer” kind of activity, not a structural one. 

What on earth does he mean by that!??

 I’m saying that tile, in itself, is only as flat, smooth, or strong as the surface underneath.  

Think of it as a cake: your tile is the frosting and your subfloor is the actual cake….it’s REALLY difficult to get a perfectly smooth and flat surface to a super wavy and lumpy cake just using frosting!!

So, how do we check on that and what do we do about it?

Well, before we get into that (below), there is one option that you can use that can help you get a flat floor without doing a too much leveling/flattening at this stage:

Okay, so now, the steps that you'll take to address flatness/smoothness in your floor will depend on whether you're installing on concrete or on wood.

With concrete, unless your floor is too low or unless you have cracks in your concrete, you don’t need to use underlayment. Unfortunately, cracks are incredibly common, so it is likely you'll need to do something to address them.

If your floor is too low, so that the finished tile won’t be acceptably close to the existing floor that it joins up to, you’ll either want to put down a layer of self-leveler or a membrane underlayment (they make several different sizes of membrane), so that the floor will be at the same finished height as your adjoining floor, accounting for tile and thinset (usually tile and thinset come about to about 1/2" in total height, but this can vary with different tiles, so you'll want to check the thickness of your tile).

If you have cracks in your concrete, you need to check and see if you have:

• Expansion Joints/cracks: These are joints that are intentionally put in the concrete slab.
• "In-plane movement" (the concrete is the same height on both sides of the crack) that created the cracks 
• or if you have "heaving movement" (the concrete is different heights on each side of the crack) 

If you have a wood subfloor, you’ll need to put down underlayment. It is technically possible to install tile directly to plywood with a thinset that is approved for that purpose, BUT I would NEVER recommend it. Since wood expands and contracts so easily and so strongly, your floor installation will almost certainly fail if you try!

This underlayment serves 2 main purposes:

• It helps to make the subfloor (and whole floor, in general) more rigid
• It provides a good bonding surface for your tile to adhere to

Underlayment can be a waterproofing barrier (and even a soundproofing barrier, if you choose the right material), but to achieve those results, you have to use a membrane underlayment and follow the manufacturer's instructions exactly for that specific purpose.  In most cases, underlayment is not installed with the intention of being a waterproofing or soundproof barrier.

There are several options to choose from, but I would recommend that you use one of these two:

So, you’ve chosen to install cement backer board.  It's a good choice - this is my recommendation for installing on a first tile floor install. I think you'll find that cement board isn't too difficult to install.

So, you’re going to install an uncoupling membrane. These can be a little tricky, but you can definitely handle it!

A dedicated undercutting saw, like the Crain 812 Super Saw (this is the one I use), is an excellent option that gives VERY quick and EXTREMELY pretty results (you can undercut both sides of the door jamb and door casings in less than a minute with basically no effort), but generally will be more expensive than someone just starting out and/or only doing 1 floor would like to spend. (there are less expensive options, however, so if you're looking at a quick and easy tool to make perfectly precise cuts, this is it!)

How to do it: First, you place a tile on the floor, then put the saw next to it and adjust the height of the blade to the top of the tile.  Next, you will rotate the saw around the door jamb, cutting the casing and jamb in the process. You'll probably also need to use a multi-tool to cut the inside corners (if you have them), where the door casing meets another wall). Then, you'll use a hammer and painter's tool to tap out the notch where the tile will end in the door jamb.

Note: Be careful when cutting! As with any saw, the blade is running at high speed and is sharp - and this blade is cutting sideways instead of up/down!

A multi-tool with a wood blade is much less expensive than the dedicated undercutting saw (you may even already have this tool at home) and relatively precise and pretty quick.  Blades don’t last very long at all, but if you’re only having to cut a couple of doorways, a blade should easily last through that.

How to do it: Place a tile directly against your door with a piece of cardboard underneath (this is to account for the height of the thinset that will go underneath - these multi-tool blades are EXTREMELY thin, so you need to have that cardboard for spacing), then use the multi-tool to cut the door right at the top of the tile.

Note: Make sure to try to keep your blade flat with the tile...one common mistake in this process is to let the blade go up or down while cutting, which will make your final cut less precise.

A manual undercutting saw is, by far, the cheapest option, but it’s fairly difficult and quite a bit of work (especially if your doors are hardwood).  But again, if you’re only doing 1 floor and only have a single doorway, you can certainly do this pretty quickly and without spending much.

How to do it: Place a tile directly against your door (you may need to put a piece of cardboard underneath, to account for the height of the thinset that will go underneath the tile, but you may not, if the blade of your saw is thick), then use the saw to cut the door right at the top of the tile.

Note: This can take a while and be a little frustrating, but if you're only doing it on one doorway, you'll get the hang of it!

How difficult can this measuring be

 if you don't even need a tape measure, right!?

• Note: If you’re having a hard time figuring out what grout joint size you should use or you just want a general recommendation, I’d advise 3/16” (or 5mm). Also, the bigger your grout joint, the easier it will be to make your lines straight, so you can do whatever size you'd like, but you should be able to get straight lines on almost all tiles using 3/16".

• IMPORTANT NOTE: If it looks like you will finish on the opposite side with a full tile, DON’T TRUST IT!  When you’re doing the actual install, these measurements will probably not be perfect, because of variance in tile size and some other things…  So, if it looks like you’ll be a completely full tile at the other size, unless the opposite wall will be covered and you don't care how the cuts come out on that side, I would recommend starting with a ½ tile, like you’ll see in the next step. You DON’T want this area to come out with a tiny little sliver of a tile…that will be a weak point and won’t look good!

• EXCEPTION: So, there’s the exception that I mentioned earlier in the layout process: "You’ll always start with a full tile, here, with one exception!" The exception is: 

If your final tile, on the opposite side of your room, will be smaller than 2”, start with a ½ tile instead of a full tile.

That’s it!  

Remember: we don’t really care TOO MUCH about any area that is going to be hidden or covered by something, so if you’re doing this measuring and find that the opposite side of the room is going to result in a 1” or 1.5” cut, but it’s going to be completely covered by a vanity, NOT A BIG DEAL – stick to the full tile on the opposite/visible side!  We care more about what the VISIBLE area of the room looks like than what’s under a cabinet, behind a toilet, or covered by something.

One final note: if you go through this process and find that your room is not square and some of the walls are crooked, don't get bent out of shape! That’s very, VERY common (just as common in brand new houses as in very old houses, unfortunately).  This doesn’t mean that your house is horribly constructed or garbage!  But that is the MAIN REASON why we don’t want our tile to finish on the opposite wall with a small cut tile or a full tile (unless it’s under something or hidden by something): you’ll have to cut your tiles to match your walls and if you have a crooked wall (which, honestly, you probably will – it’s that common) and you have a little tiny piece, that 1.5” sliver may go from 1.5” to 3” in size or it may go from 1.5” to nothing!  And THAT is very noticeable and very ugly…you want to avoid that whenever possible.

Here are the 6 basic tools that you'll need for your tile project:

• Note: If you're doing your first tile job and don't know if you'll do more, the cheap/disposable trowels (of the right size) will work just fine. If you clean them, they'll last through quite a few uses...or you can get multiple and throw them away when you're done with them.
• Tip: We do push the boundaries a little bit on trowel sizes – I will generally not switch to a 1/2”x1/2” trowel until I’m over a 16x16 tile size…also, I’ll almost never use the small v-notch because it just doesn’t leave enough material underneath for a good bond.

Size:

• Note: If you’re having a hard time figuring out what grout joint size you should use or you just want a general recommendation, I’d advise 3/16” (or 5mm). Also, the bigger your grout joint, the easier it will be to make your lines straight, so you can do whatever size you'd like, but you should be able to get straight lines on almost all tiles using 3/16"

Shape:

Here are the 2 basic materials that you'll be using for your tile project:

You may have already done this before installing underlayment, but it's worth doing a couple of things again.  The more flat your floor is, the easier and more successful your install will be!

1. First thing: If there is any thinset or adhesive on the floor, make sure to get it off...you want it as smooth and flat as possible.
2. Next, use an 8-foot (or smaller, depending on your room size) straight edge and draw lines and notes to mark where your floor is high or low.  If the size of these waves on the floor, going up or down, is more than about ¼”, you will have a hard time getting your tiles to set flat unless you do something to get those areas flat first.  If you find that your floor has waves or bumps going up, you’ll probably have to use a self-leveler to get the floor flat before you can tile.  I’ll get into some detail about leveling a floor in another article dedicated to that.  If you find that you have dips in the floor, you can do 1 of 4 things:

This section is long, but this is what you've been waiting for!  I'll try to make it as easy to follow as possible.

• Note: If the door jamb is cut too low, you can take a multi-tool and cut it with the tile butted up to the wood, so that you can remove whatever is necessary to be able to slide the tile under.

• Note: If you are starting at the doorway, I would recommend setting one side of the doorway, then setting tiles around the perimeter, as in the following image.

• One final tip: I find it easier for me, and for my clients, to use the process of elimination, here. I will generally remove the grout sticks that are my "potentials" from the case and set them down, side-by-side in/around the grout joints.  This way, it's much easier to remove the "wrong" ones, little by little, until you get down to your perfect choice!

These are the basic tools needed to grout.

These aren't too many materials that you need, at this point.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're about to do the final major step in installing your floor!

• Wash all of the area that you spread grout on.  You should see that this will leave a foamy layer on the surface of the tiles and grout joints.

• Note: You’ll need to use water during this phase, but try not to use excessive amounts of water or to rub the tiles too hard.  If you use too much water or rubbing, you could pull the color out of your grout and/or pull the grout out of the joints.  Timing is important in the Wash phase because you want to make sure to break the bond of the grout to the tiles before it hardens too much, but not so early that you’re pulling the grout out of the joints.

Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of sealing is not to prevent water from getting into your tile and/or grout. Unfortunately, because of the nature of liquids, if something sits on the surface for long enough, it will almost always manage to get through, eventually…and this holds true for sealers, as well. But the real purpose of sealing is to prevent staining agents, like red wine, grape juice, and the Oh-So-Dangerous-Oils from STAINING your tiles or grout (just like with your furniture or clothes!). So, because of this, the real function of sealers is to give you enough time to get that staining agent off the tile and/or grout to prevent it from working its way in and leaving a permanent stain!