Layin' It Down... Tile Part One (Subfloor)

Before Pic

Other Side Before

Well, I avoided it for as long as I could, but I'm finally back to post about tiling the kitchen floor. Why so long? Well, while the floor still looks great, it didn't exactly turn out perfect and I wasn't exactly thrilled to share. Some things I can live with, but others will need fixed in the future, but we'll talk more about that later, so let's start at the beginning.


The original (using that term loosely) flooring was self adhesive vinyl squares that had been placed directly on the subfloor. At first I thought I could use my multi-tool to scrape it up, but the adhesive made this too difficult to do without pulling up chunks of subfloor, so I decided we would just have to leave it. You should never put tile directly on vinyl flooring, but we laid down backer board between, so it was ok in this instance. After putting in a few screws to take the squeak out of the boards below and removing the trim, it was time to move out all the appliances and start roughing in some backerboard.

JW had to get the trim
out of the tight spaces.

Halfway done roughing in.

Now, I'm going to stop right here and dispel some of the nonsense that I came across while learning to work with backerboard. There are people out there saying, "It's supposed to be cut with a box cutter but that doesn't work." Then they give you all these cockamamie ways to work with it and cut it. They are all idiots, so don't waste your time. Hardiebacker, the company that makes the stuff, explicitly says (and shows on their website) that you should use a carbide tip scorer. A couple passes on each side and a solid push with the knee splits it right in two. The only time that it gets tough is when you have to cut out notches/shapes or you have to trim off a couple inches on one end, but there is a technique for shapes and holes, and I figured out how to make the edges easier on my own. OK, rant over.

Just buy one, you cheapskate!

We were actually pretty lucky when it came to putting down the backerboard. They come in 3'x5' sheets and (excluding the gaps for the fridge and stove) our kitchen floor measures 9'x10'. So it could have been a lot worse, but not much cutting was needed and leftovers often fit into other spaces like the pantry. You're probably going to laugh when I tell you about the hardest part, but I'll first say that I didn't find the technique I mentioned earlier for cutting shapes until after the subfloor was finished. The toughest part was cutting out the notch for the stoves 220 outlet. For the life of me, it was next to impossible to get that cut out doing it the hard way. I think I ended up using a pipe wrench to snap off small pieces until it was all out. So yeah, I'm an idiot.

Nobody likes you, you spooty outlet!!

Now, we roughed-in (pre-cut and placed) our backerboard because it was just the wife and me for the majority of the project and I wanted to put mortar underneath it to help level out the floor and prevent flexing. So we had to work fast once the mortar was mixed. If you have plenty of help and no kids around, or you don't need/want to mortar your backerboard, you can just cut as you go. Once I was done fitting boards into place I numbered them all so we didn't get them mixed up and it was time to mix up the first batch of mortar.

Ready for mortar.

When it counts, use numbers!

Armed with a fresh bucket of mortar and trowels in hand, Tracy and I started laying down boards. It was probably the fastest part of the whole process. Slap down a bunch of mortar, throw a board on top, walk on it a little to set it and remove air, and move on to the next one. There was only one board that put up a fight and it was the last one (it's always the last one, right?). The final piece of backer that went in the pantry had to be... coerced.

Me: "Hey board, do you fit?"

Board: "No."

Me: (Wham!) Now ya do!

About a million screws after the last board was mortared down, it was time to mud and mesh tape the seems of the boards. At least, we thought it was time. All my research before hand had showed to ways of doing it. The first was before you start laying tile so it can cure with the mortar under the backerboard, the second was just before or as you actually lay tile. I'm still not sure whether we suck at taping or if we just chose the wrong method, but this step created a very big issue by creating humps at the seams. This made it next to impossible to keep the tile level when laying it. So, my suggestion would be the second method of doing it as you lay the tile, but you should probably ask a pro about your particular floor first.

That's it for this post. Check back soon for Part Two. Haven't decided if I'll make this a two or three part article, but I'll definitely be going over spacing out and actually putting down tile in the next post. As always, if you enjoy the blog feel free to help us out and click an ad or two. We always appreciate it. If we can get some ad money in, I might spoil you guys with some DIY Giveaways.

Thanks for reading!