What Mistakes To Avoid With Slate Tile Flooring
As with any floor tiling project, you will be ordering boxes of slate tiles in bulk. And as with anything made of stone that is ordered in bulk, you will be expecting a percentage of the tiles to be in several broken pieces!
This is true, and it is not to be a big shock to you. When dealing with mass amounts of slate, damages can occur when handling them (or shipping them).
To counter for this: order extra tiles! It is best that you order extra to make up for any potential cracking to the tiles. Not only will it be easier on you when there ARE damaged tiles, it will be a time saver as you can immediately replace the tiles instead of waiting for future shipments to arrive.
As soon as you receive your entire set of floor tiles, be sure to inspect each and every single one of them. Do set aside the ones with chips and cracks, and any other broken tiles so you can return them.
And when you are testing out the placement of your floor tiles, you can keep in mind that you should be removing any loose dirt pieces that exist.
If there are any loose materials lingering around, it will not make for a smooth installation into the floor substrate. The tiles will have a high chance of being quite not level with each other.
What will also be messed up is if you lay the slate tiles onto a wet floor! It is a definite no-no. Who knows what is going to happen if all that moisture is trapped for so long underneath?
You can expect to wait and wait and wait when taking on each step towards slate tile flooring freedom. Especially after waxing. You will have to wait even more before the wax is fully cured. Until then, no sealer action yet!
The wait is well worth it, though. I know I’m not speaking for myself when I say that footprint marks left in the wax are not so nice to look at permanently in slate tiles. I made the mistake myself, and I’ve never been able to get rid of the marks.
As the next chapter in the “waiting for tiles” saga, you will have to wait for the grouting, too. The average wait time: 24 hours. This way, all of the mortar can settle nicely and dry up well before you grout.
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Posted: March 11th, 2010 under Floors and Flooring.
Tags: Floors and Flooring
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