`Quick Marble Tile tutorial for your floors...

Quick Tile How- to with pics from October issue of

Miniature Collector Magazine

In my previous post, I mentioned I planned to tile the bathroom and perhaps the hallway floors with a marble how to I found in Miniature Collector. Yesterday while taking care of household chores, which was sooooooooo boring, I decided to get started on the prep work of the house. It was way too cold yesterday to go out and try to rip out the remaining carpet, or to paint or prime, so I thought that getting a jumpstart on the prep work of the room floors in the bathroom would be a good start, that would save time later.

Ok, let's get started.

Tools and materials you will need:

2-4 tiles Mine were about 12 x 12, and whatever tile you use, they should have the sticky paper backing. Mine were found at the Home Depot for 98 cents each. Look in the tile/flooring section. I did not find any comparable at Lowe's, just make a note of that. These tiles are usually sold by the case, or singly, in a variety of patterns and colors.

Ruler

SHARP, Exacto or Stanley blade knife

pencil

Start by Marking your tile off in 1 inch increments across each side. I did this on all four sides:

As the pics show, connect the dots where you have marked. Your tile should look like the above pic, graphed in 1 inch small squares. These will be your tiles. If you are doing patterns, you can make your tiles larger, depending onthe size of your room. Since my bath room will be small, I won't need but so many. I will probably cut the dais tiles for the bathtub in different sizes.

Now that the graph is marked, take your ruler and score along those lines, both ways across. You will need a very sharp blade for this. After all lines are scored, begin to snap off the sections, then 'snap' off the tiles in the small sections, as shown.

Snap your tiles in two, as shown above. The tile is flexible, and should snap on the scored lines you made with your exacto blade.

You will then have a variety of tiles that look like this:

And eventually a swell supply like this-

For grout, I recommend Zap a dap Spackle patch, or Quik Seal tub and tile grout, buy it in a larger pail, as with playscale it will take alot. A variety of things can be used to spread your grout after the tiles are secured on your floor base. (I recommend with these sticky tiles using a drop of Tacky Glue for extra hold- no superglues because of the tile materials or hot glue, which doesn't hold well.) With Zap a dap you can add in a color of acrylic paint if you want your grout colored, spread on with popsicle stick or a plastic spreader, make sure all cracks are filled, then wipe off with damp sponge or cloth. Let the grout dry, the wipe down again to get any crumbling pieces off, and seal with a varnish or sealer. I am going to be storing mine in a plastic baggie until I'm ready to use them, I hope my quick how to helps.

I am currently working on a mantel holiday garland for my 1/6 scale Bespaq fireplace for Christmas, I will post pics of this how to when I'm finished.

~Lisa