The time has come to lay the tile. First I had to find the exact center of the floor. I won’t go over the details here since you can find instructions for that all over the net. After I found the center, I had to plan the tile layout so I had a decent amount of tile showing around the perimeter of the room as well as around the cabinets. The general guideline is that you want at least 4 inches of tile showing around the perimeter of a room. Anything less and it might look funny or even worse, the tile may not stay stuck down with such a small surface area for adhesion. It really worked out well for me, but I would say it was 25% planned and about 75% luck that it ended up looking so good.
My tiles were peel-and-stick — stick being the operative word here. I pretty much only had one shot to get them down correctly, because with the primer on the floor, the adhesive backing would grab instantly as soon as I put the tile down. There was no way to get it back up without destroying the tile. I still used the little spacers you buy for ceramic tile to create a uniform space between each tile. I didn’t want too big of a grout line so if I remember correctly, I used 3/16″ for the spacers. I laid the first tile as perfectly as I could then I built the rest of the floor out from that 1 tile. My carpenter’s square was invaluable to me during this part of the project, especially laying down the first row.
It also helped me make sure I was still square over the course of the whole process. When I reached a wall, I would custom cut each tile on the spot. These tiles are rigid, but still can easily be scored with a utility knife. What I would do is score the finished surface of the tile with the knife, then bend the tile toward the cut and it would break cleanly along the score line.
Laying the tile took two nights to do. I had some nice knee pads and I know they saved my knees, but I remember my back was killing me after being on my hands and knees two nights in a row. I was pretty amped up at this point because I could see the light at the end of the tunnel for this project and everything was looking so good.
Next time I will cover the grouting process.
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