DIY Network

Slate Floor: Border and Sealing Installation From "Rock Solid" episode DROC-108

Your field tile is in place, so the next step is the border and sealing it all up.

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	The once casual entryway...
	is now "VA-VA-VOOM!"...
	with a new, beautiful slate floor.
	Figure A
	Figure B
	Figure C
	Figure D
	Figure E
	Figure F

Materials:

Stone hammer
Chisel
1/2 in. heavy duty drill (with a 4 in. mixing paddle)
4 in. diamond blade grinder
Wet tile saw
3/8 in. notched trowel
Small trowel
Margin trowel
Rubber float
1/8 in. tile spacers
Clean sponges
Clean white rags
Buckets (several)
Square
Chalk lines (with red and blue chalk)
Measuring tape
Pencil
Crayon
Safety glasses
Knee pads
Thin set
Quick setting thin set (optional)
Penetrating sealer
Grey grout
Tile

Border and Sealing Installation

1. After the field tile has dried overnight (figure A), begin setting the border. Dry set your border, making all of your cuts beforehand to ensure that the setting process goes smoothly and quickly. The border for this project consists of a four inch decorative border on paper backing composed of glass and 1x3 slate tiles and a back border created from the 12x12 slate field tiles.

2. Dry set the back border first, making all of the individual cuts. Make straight cuts with the wet tile saw and curved or detailed cuts with the diamond blade grinder (figure B).

Safety Alert: Wear your safety glasses with both methods!

3. Follow up by dry setting the decorative border (figure C). To dry set the decorative border, find the center of each border section, mark that line with a straight edge and a pencil and set the decorative border from the center of that section to the nearest angle. This step ensures that your decorative border will have even cuts on either side of each decorative border section.

4. With the border completely dry set, mix your thinset and begin setting your border tile. For this portion of the project, we used a quick setting thinset, but standard thinset will work just as well.

5. Set the back portions of the tile border first (figure D). Because the decorative border Dean and Derek used is four inches wide (with joint size accounted for), their tile expert suggested laying a wood 2x4 in the area where the decorative border would go, so that the back border would have a straight edge to run up against. Once each section of the back border is set, remove the 2x4 and run a level or square from the field to the back border to make sure the areas levels are matching (figure E).

6. With the back portion of the border set, set the decorative border (figure F). Apply and notch the thinset with a small margin trowel, place the decorative border in the thinset and press down with the rubber float to ensure that the border is setting in the thinset. Because the decorative border used in this project had a paper backing, once the thinset for the decorative border had hardened, Dean and Derek wet the paper backing and peeled it back. In the waiting spaces, they set small one inch glass squares using thinset (figure G).

7. After the thinset completely dries, thoroughly clean the tile floor and then seal it. Dean and Derek used a color enhancing penetrating sealer designed for stone material. Sealer is a product where you get what you pay for, so don’t be afraid to pay a little more – it will help you in the end. Apply the sealer following the manufacturer’s instructions, but the expert for this project suggested using clean white rags – colored rags could bleed color onto the slate (figure H).

8. Allow the sealer to completely dry.

Figure G

Figure H

RESOURCES :

Capitol Tile & Marble Company
9525 Berger Rd.
Suite K
Columbia, MD 21046
Main: 800-851-5675
Fax: 301-854-6247

Stone & Pewter Accents
3555 Lomita Blvd.
Units H & J
Torrance, CA 90505
310-257-1300
Website: www.stonepewteraccents.com

GUESTS :

Tom Nigro, President
Capitol Tile & Marble

Marlon Roberts, President
Kemar Creations Tiling, Inc.
13308 Trum Peter Swan Ct.
Upper Marlboro, MD 20774
Office: 301-218-4772
Fax: 301-218-6626
E-mail: kemarcreations@yahoo.com