How to Install Dura Ceramic Tile
This vinyl tile flooring that you can grout, best simulates real ceramic tile, and is rapidly growing in popularity. I can help you install it with a few tricks of the trade.
Step One
Install a high quality 1/4"plywood underlayment, by attaching it to the subfloor. Use either 1 ¼' ring shank nails spaced every 6 inches in the field of the board, and 1-3'on seams, or staples, with the narrow crown stapler hooked up to the air compressor (much faster, just go rent it!). Make sure you go around and countersink any nail or staple heads that are sticking up. Stagger boards so you never have 4 corners meet together. Also try to avoid installing underlayment seam edges on top of subfloor seams. This could cause problems with the seams telegraphing through the vinyl/tile, when the house shifts with the seasons. Cut out around cabinets, and other objects, by using a scoring and snapping technique with the utility blade and straightedge. Undercut the doorjambs, to the combined thickness of the underlayment and the flooring being installed, so you can slide the flooring underneath for a clean, and professional look. Once the underlayment is installed use a high quality Portland-based patch filler like Ardex Feather finish or something comparable; and a 6' to 10' flexable drywall knife to patch the underlayment seams. Patching the seams is much like patching drywall seams. Don't build it up too heavy, but make sure you put enough to float over the seams, so after it dries you cannot feel the edges of the boards. Once dry you can lightly sand any high spots in the seams with a 60 to 80 grit sand paper. I use a hand-sanding block, but you can also use a palm sander. Just don't over sand, and create depressions in the seams.
Step Two
Lay the tile out in such a manner that you will end up with no less than half a tiles measurement against any high visibility wall. For example: DuraCeramic is approx. 15 ½' wide. Try to end up with no less than 8' to 7' tiles against the wall if possible. I usually lay out 4-5 tiles, leaving space between tiles, to simulate the grout gap. Then I measure them from the first tiles edge to the 4th or 5th tiles edge. Using that measurement, I can check my ending tile sizes against multiple walls, and shift accordingly.
Once you have you perfect layout. Snap two intersecting lines at a 90-degree angle to each other, in the middle of the room. With your glue trowel, spread out approx. half of the room with the blue DuraCeramic glue, ending along one of your chalk lines.
Make sure you use the metal trowel blade that hooks onto the end of your trowel, supplied from Congoleum. When spreading the glue, don't leave any lumps. It should be thin and evenly distributed. Wait about 30min-1 hr for the glue to dry almost clear, and tacky to the touch.
Step Three
Place your first tiles at the crossroads of your chalk lines. Work in a step or pyramid-style-fashion from your starting point, this helps to keep the tiles square to each other. As you lay your tiles, you will need to leave a space between tiles for the grout. To do this I take a 4' X 15 ½' wide length of tile and use that as my spacer. If you would like wider grout lines, you can take a leftover scrap of underlayment and glue it to the back of your tile spacer. Finish cutting the rest of your tiles with a carpenter's square, and your utility knife. You can mark your cut tiles against the wall, by placing a full tile with a small gap to the wall, and tracing a line on top of the adjacent tile. For odd shapes around door ways or other objects, use your heat gun on the back of the tile to heat the tile up to make it soft enough to cut out the shape.
Step Four
Grouting the tile.
Before grouting the tile, you have to clean out any debris and excess glue out of the joints. I use mineral spirits sparingly on a rag to clean the glue residue, and then a shop-vac to suck up any debris that found its way into the joint.
Next fill the two buckets with cold water, and gather 2-3 sponges together. Starting at the corner of the room, fill the joints with grout using a grout float at a 45-degree angle to the floor. After packing the joints with grout, go back over the joints with the grout floor at a 90-degree angle to the floor to remove any excess grout. The next step deviates from regular ceramic tile installation: You must wipe the tile with a fairly moist sponge, and then let it sit for 30 seconds to loosen up the grout. Then go back over the tile working diagonally across the joints, with a fairly dry slightly moist sponge, to wipe up the rest of the residue. You can use all 6 sides of the sponge when wiping the tile, to insure a clean swipe every time. It's very important to only grout about 9sf at a time, any more than that, and the grout residue will be very difficult to remove from the floor. This stuff dries extremely fast! Another important note is to change the water in the bucket frequently. I usually change it after grouting about 27sf of flooring, or when the water is completely saturated with grout. Repeat the above steps for the rest of the floor. Check my site for the last steps:
Sources:www.howtoinstallflooring.com
Step One
Install a high quality 1/4"plywood underlayment, by attaching it to the subfloor. Use either 1 ¼' ring shank nails spaced every 6 inches in the field of the board, and 1-3'on seams, or staples, with the narrow crown stapler hooked up to the air compressor (much faster, just go rent it!). Make sure you go around and countersink any nail or staple heads that are sticking up. Stagger boards so you never have 4 corners meet together. Also try to avoid installing underlayment seam edges on top of subfloor seams. This could cause problems with the seams telegraphing through the vinyl/tile, when the house shifts with the seasons. Cut out around cabinets, and other objects, by using a scoring and snapping technique with the utility blade and straightedge. Undercut the doorjambs, to the combined thickness of the underlayment and the flooring being installed, so you can slide the flooring underneath for a clean, and professional look. Once the underlayment is installed use a high quality Portland-based patch filler like Ardex Feather finish or something comparable; and a 6' to 10' flexable drywall knife to patch the underlayment seams. Patching the seams is much like patching drywall seams. Don't build it up too heavy, but make sure you put enough to float over the seams, so after it dries you cannot feel the edges of the boards. Once dry you can lightly sand any high spots in the seams with a 60 to 80 grit sand paper. I use a hand-sanding block, but you can also use a palm sander. Just don't over sand, and create depressions in the seams.
Step Two
Lay the tile out in such a manner that you will end up with no less than half a tiles measurement against any high visibility wall. For example: DuraCeramic is approx. 15 ½' wide. Try to end up with no less than 8' to 7' tiles against the wall if possible. I usually lay out 4-5 tiles, leaving space between tiles, to simulate the grout gap. Then I measure them from the first tiles edge to the 4th or 5th tiles edge. Using that measurement, I can check my ending tile sizes against multiple walls, and shift accordingly.
Once you have you perfect layout. Snap two intersecting lines at a 90-degree angle to each other, in the middle of the room. With your glue trowel, spread out approx. half of the room with the blue DuraCeramic glue, ending along one of your chalk lines.
Make sure you use the metal trowel blade that hooks onto the end of your trowel, supplied from Congoleum. When spreading the glue, don't leave any lumps. It should be thin and evenly distributed. Wait about 30min-1 hr for the glue to dry almost clear, and tacky to the touch.
Step Three
Place your first tiles at the crossroads of your chalk lines. Work in a step or pyramid-style-fashion from your starting point, this helps to keep the tiles square to each other. As you lay your tiles, you will need to leave a space between tiles for the grout. To do this I take a 4' X 15 ½' wide length of tile and use that as my spacer. If you would like wider grout lines, you can take a leftover scrap of underlayment and glue it to the back of your tile spacer. Finish cutting the rest of your tiles with a carpenter's square, and your utility knife. You can mark your cut tiles against the wall, by placing a full tile with a small gap to the wall, and tracing a line on top of the adjacent tile. For odd shapes around door ways or other objects, use your heat gun on the back of the tile to heat the tile up to make it soft enough to cut out the shape.
Step Four
Grouting the tile.
Before grouting the tile, you have to clean out any debris and excess glue out of the joints. I use mineral spirits sparingly on a rag to clean the glue residue, and then a shop-vac to suck up any debris that found its way into the joint.
Next fill the two buckets with cold water, and gather 2-3 sponges together. Starting at the corner of the room, fill the joints with grout using a grout float at a 45-degree angle to the floor. After packing the joints with grout, go back over the joints with the grout floor at a 90-degree angle to the floor to remove any excess grout. The next step deviates from regular ceramic tile installation: You must wipe the tile with a fairly moist sponge, and then let it sit for 30 seconds to loosen up the grout. Then go back over the tile working diagonally across the joints, with a fairly dry slightly moist sponge, to wipe up the rest of the residue. You can use all 6 sides of the sponge when wiping the tile, to insure a clean swipe every time. It's very important to only grout about 9sf at a time, any more than that, and the grout residue will be very difficult to remove from the floor. This stuff dries extremely fast! Another important note is to change the water in the bucket frequently. I usually change it after grouting about 27sf of flooring, or when the water is completely saturated with grout. Repeat the above steps for the rest of the floor. Check my site for the last steps:
Sources:www.howtoinstallflooring.com
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