How to Repair Gaps Between Floor Tiles

Video transcription

Hi, my name is Ned Patton. I've been building or rebuilding every house I've ever owned. This is number six. Today, we're going to talk about gaps, the spacing between the tiles. If you're looking to make the job look right, you make sure that all of your gaps are the same everywhere. You have to have a tile saw, a decent tile saw. When you cut this stuff, what I've learned is that the piece you want to keep, you want to keep your finger on it because when you're cutting, you're coming down through the middle and you're cutting, you'll tend to break at the end and it will come loose. If it's able to come loose, it may break and you may have a great big thing on the end of it here that needs to be cut off and you cut them so that you don't have a gap that's any wider or narrower than any other gap. You try to make all the gaps turn out exactly right. The spacing between the tiles, you try to make the spacing between the tiles consistent everywhere because if it's not, your eye will see it and it's all about lining up the tiles just exactly the way you want to have them lined up. And it's also about the pattern and what I have to worry about here is my pattern and what I've got to worry about the next tiles I cut are going to be cut to make sure the pattern works out, it's kind of a stair step that I've got going on here. I've got to make sure the pattern works out. So, there will be a new tile going in there and then these didn't stick very well. There's three more that didn't stick very well. See? It's not going to be square. That's the only one I've seen so far, now the entire batch that wasn't cut right. The tile has go to come back out because it's not square and this one goes in the trash pile. I've got to save some of the mud. Okay this goes in the trash. That was crazy. I don't need to put as much mud on this tile because I've already got mud on the floor. That looks pretty good. Okay, let's see if we can put a square tile in this hole. Now that looks a whole lot better, son of a gun, if the tiles are square. Once you've set all the tiles and you have to have all the tiles set before you grout, when you get all the tiles set, then you fill the gaps with grout which is a cement material that's got a little bit more sand in it than the thin set mortar has and it's a particular color that comes close to matching the tile color. Today, we learned about gaps, the spacing between the tiles.