We keep moving towards tiling, but things are slow going as we continue experimenting with how to lay the tile before committing to actually mixing up some thinset. We start by replacing all of the tile that was removed from applying the RedGard. Karen leads the way with laying out the tile and she revises my numbering system for the dry layout.

Numbered tile getting ready to be re-laid out in the bathroom.

I continue working on the woodwork as Karen lays out the tile and starts spacing things out. The layout is still tricky due to the room not being completely square and it requires some fudging to get everything fit into place. I originally bought a score and snap tile cutter, and that works fine if you care cutting the tile in half, but when you use it to cut a tile say 70-30, the snap approach produces inconsistent results. Sometimes the snap is not clean and the tile chips off. Since there’s a few areas that would benefit from cuts less than 50-50 we get a cheap wet saw at Lowes to see if we can use that for cutting.

The wet saw quickly reveals itself as ineffective for cutting mosaic tile. There are 2 main problems. 1. The backing for the tiles is made of a glue/paper product. As soon as the tile sheet gets wet, the mesh backing dissolves and the tiles go from a sheet to a loose pile of tiles. I read reviews on the saw and it seemed like people used it to cut mosaic, so I didn’t realize this was a limitation. 2. Feeding the small tiles through the saw is very difficult because it requires each tile to be pressed through. Because the sheet starts rapidly breaking down when wet, you can’t safely just press the sheet through the cut because the tiles all start bunching up and flopping around. So I had to put my hands on each tile to feed it through the saw. The square tiles are 3/4” so that’s not a lot of clearance between my fingers and a saw blade.

So we quickly abandon the saw and go back to the score and snap tile cutter. We also get decent results with a tile nipper and a sanding stone for cutting one-off tiles.

As the tile is laid out, we decide to mix up some thinset and test laying the tile to get a sense of how difficult this will be. We set up a plywood sheet and test out a V-notch and a square notch trowel. On Youtube most people laying mosiac tile are using a square notch, but I read on tile forums that the V-notch is better. After testing the application, the V-notch worked a lot better. The square notch laid down too much thinset which bubbled up between the gaps of the tile. We didn’t have early success testing the tile because like the wet saw, the mesh started dissolving quickly when embedded in the thinset. We regrouped to watch some more Youtube videos and it showed someone laying the tile by leaving the dry layout in place, putting down thinset and then sliding the sheet of tile over existing tile and sliding it into place. This approach seemed to work better and allowed us to place the tile better than picking up the entire sheet and plopping it into the thinset.