Tile Crush

Material List:

– (1) bag of tile mortar mix

– (1) bag of charcoal gray grout

– (1) thick sponge for tile

– (1) 5 gallon bucket

– (?) water for mortar mix

– (1) tube of grout sealer

– (?) tile*

* I went to a Habitat for Humanity and bought $20.00 worth of tile. I grabbed all the mismatched pieces I could find, the ones that nobody else would use.

Tool List:

– trowel with 1/4” scrapping edge

– hammer

I didn’t really have a plan for the tile floor and tile eating table, I just knew that I wanted it to look crazy. This was the best part: I took a hammer and went to town smashing up the tile into random scattered pieces. Like a puzzle I sorted all the colors together, larger and smaller pieces separated.

After mixing up the bag of mortar I generously spread it onto the landing, and with the trowel, created 1/4” swirls. This is done to make sure that the height of the tiles will remain the same without any variances. After the mortar was ready, I starting dropping tiles without any pattern. I started with the larger pieces around the perimeter unfilled the inside in with the smaller pieces. I did the same effect for the two stairs and the drop down eating table.

Once the tiles were in their place I had to wait a day for the mortar to set before grouting in the lines. I mixed up the charcoal grout and with the same trowel spread the grout generously over the tile area. With the clean, wet sponge I gently removed the surface grout at a 45 degree angle. Once this was done I had to wait another day before the last cleaning. With a fresh bucket of water I removed the haze on the tiles and any imperfections in the grout lines. This takes several times to finally clean. The last step is to seal all the grout lines with a grout sealer. This took about fifteen minutes to do. Once the sealer was set, I cleaned the tiles two more time to remove the last bit of haze. I painted the risers of the staircase with a burnt orange color.

Miscellaneous