DIY tiling
What’s so special about this tile and the one next to it? No cracks or chips – that’s what. The cracked tiles in the toilet had bugged me for ages – should I spend big bucks to get a tiler in to replace two tiles, and how difficult could it be anyhow?
I looked on the net and found several sites – like this one – on doing whole bathrooms. Here’s what seemed to be in common – first, remove the grout (the mortar-like stuff surrounding the tiles) with a small chisel or steel shafted screwdriver and a small hammer. Then lift the tile and clean all the dust and grout debris from beneath the tile, the spread tile adhesive, lay the new tile and regrout. Sounds easy? Well yes it’s not very difficult.
During a trip to Bunnings for some grout, I asked one of the staff about tile adhesives etc, and he asked “how many tiles?” I said “two” – and he gave me the best tip ever: he suggested I use a Bostik product called “No More Nails” – that way I’d be spending $4.00 rather than $20. I looked dubiously at all the grout mixes and then found a great product called “Tile Grout” (duh) in a handy premixed squeeze tube from Red Devil. That was my level of technology!
I had some spare tiles of the same sort that had cracked, so I set to work on the grout. I chipped it out with a chisel – not too difficult as the stuff was brittle and it chipped out fairly cleanly. Actually it wasn’t easy to remove all the grout – so I removed enough to get a screwdriver under the cracked tile, and levering aganst a piece of wood (so I wouldn’t chip the adjacent one) gently prised the cracked tile loose with a gentle rocking motion. The offending tile came up easily without breaking further. I found it had been fixed with something very like No More Nails – but with blobs only at the ends – it had been unsupported in the middle – hence the crack.
Then, with grout brush, I carefully removed every piece of loose grout from the base surface, having chipped out the remaining grout, and then applied some blobs of No More Nails and positioned the new tile in its space. I left it for an hour to allow the adhesive to begin to set, and then went around the edges with the tube of pre-mixed grout ensuring that all the gaps were fillled.
After allowing fifteen minutes for the grout to begin setting, I took a damp cloth and ran my finger along the grout line to smooth the surface and to ensure all gaps were filled. I then rinsed out the cloth and carfully wiped up the excess grout from the tile surfaces. And there it was – a new tile – perhaps not a fully professional job, but certainly serviceable. This grout stays slightly flexible too – perfect for laying tiles on wooden floors.
I have a couple of cracked tiles in the laundry too – so I’ll photograph the whole process when I do those ones.
Cheers
Jerry
