How hard is it to tile a bathroom?

I did my own but wish i hadn’t. It turned out ok, but took forever, and halfway through I was wishing I’d paid someone to do it.

I was going to say “not hard but tedious”.

I had panels put in instead. Look fine and no grout to have to endlessly clean.
Seemed like a perfectly possible job for a reasonable DIYer, not that I tried myself 🙂

Found a local guy that looks pretty descent from his pics? [/url]

He said “Hi Alex, I would need to have a look to give a definite quote, just to confirm firm all surfaces are sound and if any prep work is needed, any complex areas, what materials are being used, etc. but generally £25 per m2”

All sounds pretty fair right? it doesn’t bloomin add up fast though does it!

Can anyone recommend which tiles to “AVOID” other than sizing but more based on quality?

If you have pretty straight corners and walls its very very easy if you are patient and pay attention to detail.

The difference I think in a pro is they can do it MUCH quicker

When I tile it takes me a lot longer to get it as perfect as possible (and as said any imperfections multiply) but it’s not hard .. it just takes a lot of time. A pro might get every bit of tile cement spot on… I might have to try and then pull the odd one up and redo it… because it’s not exactly level or its not exactly straight… the problem here is then it adds to the next row and the next etc.

It’s one of those things that the extra time adds up and the temptation to cut corners is huge…
For example I mix a small amount of tile cement as I take longer and might have to redo the odd one… so this then means extra time remixing cement.

So all that said it might take you 4x as long but if you enjoy it then it’s also very rewarding.

avoid anything other than full colour body porcelain for the floor. Avoid cheap porcelain as some, if you look closely, have their pattern printed on by some 80’s dot matrix printer

Avoid cheap glazed ceramic.. its worth 50% more in material cost to get a better tile.
I’ve seen glazed ceramic suffer localised discolorations with water bleed through cementious grout, surface cracking in the glaze etc.

For large format tile, when choosing the tile, put 2 tiles face to face.. they should touch at all 4 corners and be nice and close along the long edges otherwise your installer will be chasing cupped tiles all around the floor trying to get it true (if brick, or limited to less offset or soldier to hide)

Make the tiler use appropriate edge strips/threshold transitions. Many wont as it eats their bottom line. Any transition from nice new tile should be considered at the point of installation – NOT as an after thought and screwing a bit of metal over top.
Make sure he tiles half way under the door.
layout – layout – layout

A friend of mine did our bathroom (he’s a bathroom fitter) – spent 4 days just planning the tiles.

Bathroom was a back to brick job so new boards etc were needed. Again time spent here making sure they were nice and level meant the actual tiling went much more smoothly.

If you’re doing the floor as well onto wooden floorboards you need to put down some Hardebacker boards and then join the boards with concrete paste so the whole thing becomes one ‘slab’. Any individual movement will cause the floor tiles to pop up.

Oh and he was delighted that we chose 900mm X 300 mm porcelain tiles weighing about 8kg each – absolute pain to work with.

He did a smashing job – nice centred grout lines which line up right across the room etc.

Could I have done it myself? Possibly. Would it have looked as good? Absolutely not and having seen the amount of work that went it to it I’m glad I got someone in.

Done 3 walls (which is half the bathroom) so far and a work in progress. It was easy enough when I got going, but a pig to start – and I hate grouting. Would a professional have done a better job? Yes, definitely – I’m happy with my efforts though. The effect of the tiles is uneven, so I didn’t have to get every single edge flush.

Definitely start one row up and regarding an electric tile cutter – only use for awkward cuts – for straight cuts, a scribe/snap cutter is much easier and quicker

2017-09-27_01-42-28 by davetheblade[/url], on Flickr