Here are a few photos of a bathroom I finished today. First one shows the mortar floor I've described a few times in posts - a few minor imperfections but overall absolutely flat. The wall tiles are set with a mastic adhesive, starting anywhere since there's no slump (mostly) (With smaller tiles I use a ledger and start one row up from the bottom. The ledger is used with smaller tiles to give a nice straight line of tiles. It's easy with these 400x400 tiles to just follow a line. ) The mosaics are set in mastic from the top down, following horizontal guide lines. The block of mosaics is held by a steel float or trowel below the top row on the block and pressed onto the adhesive bed. Then the steel float is rubbed over the tiles to bed them in. A 3mm notched trowel is used for the mosaics so the adhesive doesn't squeeze through the tiles. The cove on the floor in photo 2 was needed to cover some badly postioned water services.
These tiles were polished porcelain and very hard but I still only used 3 simple tools. A Sigma scoring cutter, an angle grinder fitted with a mini arbortech and diamond blade and an old cheap, dodgy Ryobi tile saw that's done too many jobs already. With these tools I can do everything I need to - even neat bevel cuts on porcelain.
Cheers
Michael
