Why Use Tile Flooring
Tile flooring adds a bright, cosy touch to your home. It's easy on the easy, and easy to clean, two excellent reasons for installing it. The facts that it's readily and cheaply available are also points entirely in its favour. However, perhaps the best thing about installing tile flooring is that you can do it all by yourself, as a D.I.Y home-improvement project of sorts. Floor tiles can be installed on any flat, continuous surface, so you needn't rip out your floor if it's a concrete or mosaic base - tiles and mouldings do need to be removed, and the whole thing needs to be polished and levelled, but that is better - not to mention easier - than ripping up the entire floor. Floor tiles can be set on plain wooden floors as well, and quite simply.
Installing Tile Flooring
The actual work of installing tile floors is relatively simple.
First, as already discussed, you need to rip out your floor, should it possess any mouldings or be a previously tiled floor. Having done so, you need to level the floor, adding floor joists and/or polishing down the irregularities, if any such are present. This done, purchase and apply cement backer-board on the floor, fastening it with industrial-strength glue - if you've used floor joists, nail the backer-board into them. Place a tile on the backer-board to check whether you can comfortably open the door - if not, the bottom of the door will need to be trimmed.
After having done all this, and cleaned up the debris, you need to figure out a layout before you can begin to install tile flooring. To do so, first measure the dimensions of your floor, and divide by the dimensions of each tile to calculate how many tiles you require - it might be best to procure more tiles than you need, in case one breaks during installation, or one needs to be replaced later. Now dry fit the floor by laying down the tiles - creating a chalk-line grid to ensure the tiles are properly placed might be helpful - leaving enough room for tile grout. Decide whether the layout is suitable for your requirements.
Finally, begin installing tile flooring. Use a trowel to sparingly spread thinset and start setting your floor tiles on them, applying mild pressure - tap the tile into place at all corners and the center. Start at the center of the room and work your way outwards, installing the border tiles last - if you need to install a cut-tile, use a tile cutter or tile saw to do so. Allow the tiles to set over-night, and voila, you've managed to install tile flooring.