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To create borders, you will need to determine the center point of the room. Stretch string from one corner of the room to the other. Cross it with another stretched string. This is the center point of the room. Now, bisect each angle. These will be your center lines. Check with a framing square to make sure the lines are perpendicular. Imagine laying four sheets of field tile, one in each quadrant. The corners will touch at the center point.
Work out from there, using graph paper or making tik marks on the floor. Hex tile will come in
1" x 2" sheets. Mark or chalk lines where you want the border to begin and transfer the measurements to graph paper. You can let the area near the base of cabinets and walls "go wild." This means that the tile width at the outer edge of a border can vary. You might have two tiles at one point and three at another. But if the room itself is square, the differences at the edge of the room, which are usually covered by fixtures and furniture, won't be
noticeable.
Sheets of mosaic tile come with either a mesh or paper backing. You can pry up tile selectively to make up your borders in advance. That way they'll be ready when it's time to lay the tile. Working on a card table, pull tile loose from the backing sheets to make empty spaces for the contrasting tile. Brush contact cement on the replacement tile. Contact cement dries quickly and will hold the tile long enough for the tilesetter to embed the sheet in mastic or Thin-set mortar. For large jobs, Dal-Tile has architect representatives who can help you calculate quantities and discuss availability of Dal-Tile's borders. If you're restoring an apartment building, this is the way to go, and you can find the names and phone numbers of the reps on the Dal-Tile Web site. |
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When you're restoring a house, don't you sometimes wish you could slip a note to Sherlock Holmes? Put the great detective on the trail, and he'd find those six tiles you need to repair a hole the plumber knocked under the sink. I know I was ready for a helping hand after chasing from one tile store to another and finding nothing but Italian imports. Scores of OHJ readers report similar frustration: old-time ceramic companies with name changes; tile distributors with skimpy inventory. Once you stop thinking locally, however, you'll find that common historic tiles aren't as rare as they appear to be when you limit your search to sources within driving distance. Though you'd never know it to talk to dealers in suburban strip malls, "subway" tile—the ubiquitous 3"x 6" glazed wall tile—is still made. The most common floor tile—hex shapes, 1" square porcelain mosaics, and penny rounds—are just a phone call away; the production of both the black-and-white standards and colored tiles is flourishing. Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau patterns have made a big comeback. To find the materials to re-create a period room or patch your existing tile, search nationally. The Internet is a good place to begin your sleuthing. Replace or Repair? Old tilework, with its narrow grout joints, lasts practically forever, except when pipes leak. Still, you can invest a lot of time and energy tracking down ceramic tile to match your existing room. Then if you do obtain, say, "white" tile locally, it may not be the same white as the tile on your wall. Basic tile colors from the same manufacturer change subtly from production run to production run, and year to year. Even if you had the original color, you'd find that aging, wear, and crackling of the glaze had changed the tile's appearance. Where a house is undergoing extensive restoration—say, floors and walls are opened to install new pipes or heating chases or to repair water-damaged framing—it makes sense to replace tiles with period ceramics. Unsure about what your tilework could have looked like in the past? Keep in mind that, from 1890 to about 1920, most kitchens and baths had an antiseptic look: white ceramic floors and walls. After 1920, though, the influence of the Arts & Crafts Movement introduced color. Hand-painted, enameled, pottery, and terra cotta tiles gained popularity, and tile manufacturers experimented with pastels and metallic glazes. The layout of walls changed, too, with tile sometimes turned diagonally and dadoes ending in a horizontal cap. The secondary bathrooms of the house might have retained the old white-on-white motif, but the master baths, beginning in the 1920s, had colored ceramics and ultimately colored porcelain fixtures by the 1930s. Floor Tile White, nonslip mosaic tile is still practical today. Unglazed hex tile or porcelain squares, for example, are slip-proof and easy to mop with bleach. (Never put glazed tile on the floor, especially in a bath.) Both Dal-Tile and American Olean (now under the same corporate umbrella) still make the traditional black (ebony) and white tile, but each has a slightly different color palette (see "Suppliers" page 62). If local dealers can't obtain the tile you want from their distributors, try Nemo Tile in New York City. They stock American Olean's 1", 1 1/4", and 2" unglazed hex tile in white and ebony, including the classic "flower design" pattern. Dal-Tile also still makes historic borders for both squares and hex tile. The borders are designed to go with their field tile (so called because they form the "field" as opposed to the "border" of a tile job). Ordering prefabricated sheets of borders may be prohibitively expensive for a homeowner unless you are doing a large room or are lucky enough to find a distributor with a few boxes left over from a commercial job. You can make your own though, by purchasing sheets of plain black and white field tiles and rearranging them. Create your own designs using Daltile patterns for ideas. You'll never find a tilesetter with the patience to pry up mosaic tiles and reposition them. However, if you supply the border tile, a pro will be happy to lay it for you. To determine quantity, first determine the center point of your room (see "Planning for Borders" page 61). Then, using graph paper, figure out how many sheets of field tile and border tile your room will need. Plan for corners. Make up sheets well in advance so the tilesetter can move quickly. Mastic or Thin-set mortar sets up too quickly to allow time for fussing with individual tiles. Wall Tile What could be more historically appropriate above unglazed floor tile than tight-jointed 3"x 6" subway tile? When shopping, though, remember that "subway" is an unofficial term. American Olean's subway tile is sold under the "Greenwich Village" name; Dal-Tile's goes by the moniker "Rittenhouse Square." Unless you ask a distributor for these specific product lines, chances are you will strikeout. There are too many tile products for distributors to keep track of, and these are not the trendy ones. If you can't find a local distributor with the color or product you're looking for, don't worry. Nemo Tile stocks white and black, as well as many other colors. Remember that details are what make a historical look. Make sure your supplier or distributor can also provide the cove and base tile to help you complete the job. These generally come in dimensions of 2"x 6" or 3"x 6", and all subway tile is available in an assortment of colors: white, ebony, cobalt blue, ruby red, and sage are just a few. If you're leaning toward color and want a wider selection, check out tile from sources such as Tile Restoration Center, Stratford Tile Works, or Historic Tile. These companies make ceramics that rival Victorian wallpaper. The Arts & Crafts Movement brought a whole new era in color. For those living in bungalows and Prairie-style houses, hand-formed, artisan tile was a key element in the home's design. The way tile was placed on the wall also changed. Rather than the bricklike bond of subway tile, you were likely to see interruptions in pattern—tiles set diagonally, tile with diamond-dots. This ceramic artisanry is booming today. Look at the line of "Arts and Crafts," "Malibu," and "Old World" product lines from Monterey Ceramic Tile and Marble. Another company, Designs in Tile, has an excellent Web site showing how ceramics can be assembled appropriately. There are so many good choices today that it's important to use some restraint. Don't go wild reinterpreting a room. First imagine what was there. Then if you like what you see in your mind's eye, you can use historically appropriate tiles and patterns to put it back the way it was.
Suppliers
American Olean
Dal-Tile
Designs in Tile
Historic Tile
Monterey Ceramic Tile & Marble
NEMO Tile
Summitville Tile
Stratford Tile Works
Tile Restoration Center
Tile SOURCE
Resources
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