Large and Small Tiling examples

We installed two rooms in a house refurbishment using both ends of the size range of 9.5mm thick travertine tile.

In the wetroom the smallest tile size is 5cm (2 inches) square in this mosaic pattern, in the bathroom we installed 41cm x 61cm (16 inch x 24 inch).

We tanked the wet areas prior to installing tile.

The challenge with installing large format tiles is lippage. This is where one tile can stick higher than the adjacent tile. One place you really don’t want any lippage is in a bathroom. The walls of this property were warped and curved badly even though they were a solid construction. Our only option was to mechanically flatten the walls in preparation for tiling to obtain perfectly flat walls and floors.

The tiles were sealed before and after grouting and then polished. The grout lines are 3mm and grout is ivory coloured to blend in with the colour of the travertine. Its really critical to ensure a complete coverage of adhesive as these tiles weight 32kg per square metre.

We had a new 18mm ply floor laid, primed and screwed less than every 300mm to provide a sound base for this relatively soft stone. We were careful to backfill all cavities in the tiles before installing them onto a solid bed of flexible adhesive.

The result, with the correct preparation, perfectly flat walls and floors, no matter what the tile size!

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