the prairie street craftsman: Laying the tile

Fixed sub-floor? Check. Ripped up remaining flooring? Check. Cursed a lot? Check and check. That means it's time to tile. We bought 12" beige ceramic tile and decided to lay it on a diagonal.

Juniper was kind enough to be our tile-shopping "foreman"

Justin plans the layout

One thing that I think intimidates people about doing tile on a diagonal is trying to make complicated cuts while mastic is drying. Here's a little secret: do at least 1/3 of your starting layout and cuts before you start setting down anything.

Getting the layout started before setting down mastic

You'll see two types of spacers in this project: the little blue plus-shaped ones, and others that go in the corners called "bulleseyes". I have never used the bullseye type before, and thought on first glance that they might make things way easier...WRONG!

I can see where they would work for small tile on a wall in a straight arrangement, but I will never again use them for a floor. I've tiled a lot of floors on a diagonal before, and never had to fight so hard to keep my lines straight.

About halfway through, I gave up on the bullseyes and went back to doing things the old-fashioned way. Luckily, the spots where we went the furthest out of line will be under cabinets, not out in the open.

We also had to contend with some minor slope to the floor, even after rebuilding a large part of the subfloor. This means that we will have to jack up the center of the house at some point in the future. Hopefully, this will not wreck all of our tiling efforts. The diagonal mitigates the chances of really destroying the floor...or at least that's the hope.