Visual Eye Candy: herringbone tile

We tiled this herringbone floor ourselves, and it has a big impact on a tight budget. Now we are NOT professional tilers so take all this advice at your own risk. This is just what we did, and what we have found works for us. This is about our 5th floor that we have tiled ourselves. Doing projects like this yourself can save you a boatload of money!

We started out on a cement floor. If your tiling over cement floor you do not need to put cement board down. If you are tiling on wood, you must put cement board down first before you begin these steps.

To create this pattern you must start at an angle. It is very helpful to open a few boxes and lay the tile out and make sure it will work. For us it was the entryway into the Family Room. It reduced the number of cuts that needed to be made and helped us start with a straight line. A helpful tip is to use a laser level to make sure you have a straight edge. Don't go off the wall lines, walls are almost never straight!

Once you figure out where your starting lay your Thinset down. We found it easiest to use a putty knife to put it down then use the trowel to go over it. The trowel will insure that you have the same thickness all over. Make sure that your thinset goes up to fill all the holes in the trowel. Only work in small sections, you don't want the thinset to dry before you can lay the tile down. We do a little section, lay the tile, then move on.

(Using the putty knife to put the thinset down.)

Once you have the thinset evenly placed down, lay down a piece of tile. Just move it a little back and forth while pressing down firmly. The Herringbone pattern is simple to create, the trick is to make sure you keep the pattern consistent when making your cuts. Having a reference picture on hand can help to lay the pattern. Try to lay your tile so you never have to step on it again, the last thing you want is to tile yourself into a corner! So it's always good to plan it out ahead of time! =)
We chose to lay down all of the solid pieces first and let them dry in place. Coming back another day we did all of the edge pieces that needed to be cut. This allows you to pre-cut the tile before you mix the thinset instead of cutting the tile as you go and battling thinset that is drying up.

(Scraping the thinset with the trowel)

Before you put your spacers in, run it along the grout lines to remove any extra thinset. This will help prepare the tile for grout. We used to always put our spacers in the four corners where the tile meets. But we found they are really hard to get out when it's dry. So now we place them like this, on there side and about 4-6 per side.