Installing Porcelain Tile In The Laundry Room: a house log

A newly tiled floor in a new room of the house is nearly sufficient to give me jazz hands (a York peppermint patty is sufficient to give Sherry jazz hands, so clearly we have distinct thresholds).

We are fully enamored with this floor – and there is a budding romance that involves a saw – so let us cover the laundry room tile installation, from floor prep to grouting & sealing.

Before any tile could get installed, the subfloor needed to be prepped with some cement board, which is a preferred surface for tile installation. They come in 3ft x 5ft sheets, so I was able to fit two full pieces plus a few strips in the room. I cut them all by simply scoring them with my utility knife and then breaking them along that line.

Once I had “dry fit” all of my pieces, it was time to in fact adhere them with thinset. The layer of thinset between them and the wood subfloor will assist keep them from shifting, grinding or flexing against one another. I used the same thinset I would later use for my tile install, mixed with water (simply by following the directions on the bag) and my drill’s mixing paddle. I will get into more details about the whole mixing-of-the-thinset process in a second.

I spread the thinset using a 1/4″ notched trowel – coating the surface with the flat side of the trowel (doing one cement board area at a time) and then scraping grooves into it using the notched side, simply like you do when you install tile.

Then I was able to press the cement board pieces in firmly and move right along. Here are all of the sheets down, with about an 1/8″ gap between them and the wall.

To assist pull them securely towards the floor during drying (and to further stabilize them for the long term) I screwed down the edges (about every 6-10″) using special cement board screws. And I threw a few in the middle too – about every 12 to 16 inches.

Many walkthroughs have you tape and mud (with thinset) all of the seams and screw holes next, simply like with drywall. I have found it easier to simply apply the mesh tape on the seams now and then apply the thinset during the tiling process. For me, it keeps me from accidentally creating any high ridges at the seams or screw hole bumps that the extra layer of thinset might create.

After mesh taping all the seams, we could start dry fitting our tiles, simply to figure out the best way to situate the brick-pattern we were going for. We began off by centering the pattern, but we were not crazy about the thin slivers of tile it would have left on either side of the room. Note: Simply look at the back two rows here (the closer tiles are simply randomly placed).

After a decent amount of experimenting, we opted to shift the pattern slightly towards the left wall, which meant we could use a full tile on the left side, and also left room for a bigger piece of tile on the right end (no more compact slivers). The washer and dryer will be offset to the left side of the room anyway, so we think it’ll feel nicer this way (especially since those few smaller cuts of tile on the right side will mostly be hidden by a base cabinet in that back corner and the door to the room, which will swing to rest along that side. Note: Once again, simply the two back rows of tile are placed in their intended positions here.

Cutting the tiles was especially straightforward. Why? Because we at last picked up a full-size wet saw. After nearly five years of using our old $99 hand-me-down tabletop wet saw to tile our first house’s bathroom, our second house’s patio, and the sunroom floor in this house, I at last dropped $277 on this one at Home Depot thanks to a $20 off coupon (that is not an affiliate link). The difference was incredible. I enjoy this thing so much, I want to take it out to dinner.

I have yet to decide my go-to part. Could it be the stand that allows you to work at regular height instead of crouching on the floor? The big water tray that means you do not have to stop to replace/de-sludge the water all the time? The laser to assist keep cuts pleasant and straight? All contenders. But likely my go-to feature is the rolling tray that I can simply set my tile on and slide through the blade. It is not only a lot faster, it also helped me keep all of my cuts especially straight.

Anyways, let us get back to the tiling process before I sound like someone trying to sell you a Especially Shammy (“this will solve all of your problems and change your life!”).

After getting some of the first few cuts done for our dry fit, Sherry and I went through all of our tile boxes to take inventory on the ones we liked best. We enjoy the movement and veining in the tiles, so we hoped to be sure the best ones ended up in highly visible spots in the room (no sense hiding our go-tos under the washer & dryer). So we sorted through them and pulled out go-tos (which we’d be sure to position in the middle of the room), regulars (not remarkable, but not bad either – ones we could use near the door or along the wall), and a third pile we affectionately dubbed “the not-as-nicers” (not pictured). They were more spotty than veiny, so we reserved most of them for the where the appliances would go.

Here is the gist of my supplies for in fact laying the tile (wet saw excluded, obviously).

• Bucket for mixing thinset (using water & the mixer attachment for my drill)
• Margin trowel for scooping thinset out (when I was not simply dumping it out directly from the bucket)
• Notched trowel for spreading thinset
• Square and pencil for marking cuts
• Spacers for keeping tiles spaced equally (we used 1/16th spacers)

I have a tendency to mix my thinset too thick, so I made a conscious effort to use a bit more water this time. They frequently say it should be like pancake batter and I like my pancakes thick, so I should’ve realized this about myself a while ago.

I worked about two rows at a time, doing my cuts as I went. It helps to have a pleasant long level on hand to check that none of your tiles are sticking up oddly for a smooth, level result.

These sorts of cuts were quite straightforward. I began at the end with the full tile (or the 12″ half-cut tile) so once I got to the other side I simply held up a full tile and marked where it needed to be sliced. Who knows how I ended up with this weird wooden tree pencil.

It took me less than two hours to get the whole thing down once I began in fact placing tile, so it was certainly one of my faster tile jobs.

I left everything dry about a day and a half before pulling out my spacers (I opted to keep my painters tape contraption around the dryer plug through grouting).

One of the parts I am most proud of in this project is the transition, which Sherry and I chose we should attempt to make, well, transition-less. I had originally planned that we’d have some sort of transition piece (you know that slopes up a little to connect two distinct flooring types), but we have consistently liked the two transition-free tile-to-wood doorways downstairs (it is perfectly flush where the tiled foyer meets the wood-floored office and dining room) so we opted to give it a go here too.

It required adding back two pieces of wood first (to bring the hardwoods about halfway into the middle of the doorway) and thankfully my planning with the subfloor height paid off: the floors are EXACTLY the same height. I still cannot believe it. Here they are all grouted and complete simply so you can see what I mean:

Speaking of grouting, after letting the thinset cure for 48 hours, it was time to grout. The material list was somewhat similar:

• Small bucket for mixing grout, using the margin trowel
• Non-sanded grout (since our joints are smaller than 1/8″) – we went with a color called Dolorean Gray from Home Depot
• Water for mixing with grout powder, and for wiping clean
• Float for applying grout
• Sponge for wiping it off

You add the water to the bucket first, then the grout powder. I began with a crazy amount of water for some reason, so I ended up mixing up a ridiculously large batch of grout for such a small room with so few joints.

Grouting is fairly straightforward, especially when you are working with big tiles, since it is swift to cover all of the joints. Using the rubber float you press grout between the tiles, then at an angle you wipe off the excess.

I was able to grout the whole room in about 20 minutes, and you can see how it starts to dry lighter – indicating that it is time to start wiping it off.

I made the mistake of using too much water when grouting the sunroom (which we think caused the grout to dry lighter than we had intended) so I was truly careful to make my sponge only slighty damp when wiping off the excess this time.

After a couple of passes with my barely-wet sponge, it still looked extremely hazy (this is the point where I think I panicked in the sunroom and got water crazy).

But this time around I let it dry another 90-minutes and then came back with a fully dry microfiber cloth (they recommend cheese-cloth, but I did not have any handy). The microfiber cloth seemed to do the trick simply as well, and some light scrubbing buffed off a lot more of the haze.

Here is the floor post-buffing. MUCH better. Phew.

We let the grout dry for 3 day, per the instructions. Things were still looking a little hazy in there, so Sherry busted out some grout hazer remove that we had leftover from the sunroom project. You in short spread it on liberally with a sponge, let it sit for a few minutes, then wipe it off with a scrub pad. Then she wiped the room down with clean water a couple of times to get all of the haze remover off.

Then we waited for that to dry out for around 12 hours before applying a sealer on both the tile and the grout to assist protect it from staining. It too is fairly straightforward to do – simply wipe it on with a sponge, let it soak in for a few moments, and then wipe any excess off with paper towels.

Those two steps certainly brought the tile to life a bit more, which is why we recommend not skipping over the haze remover step.

Sometimes you do not realize the film leftover from the grouting process until it is gone.

Here is the cost breakdown for the floor tile project:

• Cement board & screws from Home Depot:$48
• Blast Anthracite 12 x 24″ tiles from The Tile Shop: $353
• Thinset from The Tile Shop: $29
• Grout in Dolorean Gray from Home Depot: $13
• Buckets, sponges, trowels, spacers, float: $8 (since we already owned most of them, but add $25 or so if you do not)
• Superior Haze Remover: $0 (we had some leftover, but it is $9 at The Tile Shop)
• Superior Penetrating Sealer: $0 (we had some leftover, but it is $13 at The Tile Shop)
• TOTAL: $451

So it was fairly much $350 in tile and $100 in supplies. I am excluding our new wet saw since it is not a cost specific to this one project, and I do not want someone to think that $277 must be incurred on a project like this, but after seeing what a difference it made, if you are working with a low-cost old tile saw I highly recommend the upgrade. I am in fact mad that I did our giant sunroom without my new tiling toy.

Wrapping up this tile job means we can in fact start putting this room together. Which is especially exciting because we picked up our cabinets at Ikea on Friday (ignore the random pillows in that basket, they were for a cousin we met up with on the same trip).

We are thinking we will get at least the upper cabinets hung before we bring the washer & dryer in, since dropping cabinets on pricey appliances is not a risk we want to take. But once those are in, we may at last be back in business to wash our clothes at home again. High five! Anyone? High five? Are you leaving me hanging because I smell like a guy that simply tiled without a washing machine?