As a Certified Red Seal Tile Setter the substrates (sub structure) and prep work are crucial elements and have a direct affect on not only the finished product but also the long term performance. Since this project involves a kitchen back-splash, there is no need to buy/install cement board of any type or a thing of the past called Green board. Like any tile job, everything must be level/square and solid first! Removing existing tiles and minimizing the damage to the existing wall board requires the right tools and a certain degree of patience. Personally, I have never seen cement board behind any type/kind of back-splash tile(s). Ceramic tiles are the most porous kind of tile and should be properly sealed as well as all grout lines. Also, in water areas, your grout line thickness should never exceed 1/8 of an inch. This helps in minimizing water penetration and also helps in the visual appeal. The idea is to showcase the tile not the grout lines! Secondly, and equally important is to try and get the grout color as close to the main color in the tile, that way it gives a visual appearance in being one large piece of tile, although it isn't! Solid color tiles should always be complimented with a slightly off color grout (i.e. white tile - off white grout). Your investment is in the tile, not the grout line, so it makes sense to showcase the tile! For DIY people, forget spending your time looking at 50 different videos on YouTubes or even worse, the advise you get from some hourly clerk at your local improvement store! It is to your advantage to buy your tiles at a place that specializes in tiles only and nothing else! They will and should supply you with everything you will need material wise to do your intended project. On another note, buy a few tiles first; take them home and place them where they are going to be installed ( tape them to the wall if that is where they are being installed); stand back an look at it to see if you like the color/size and the pattern. What any tile looks like in a showroom can look a lot different under different lighting conditions!

I'm grateful I read this, for I am considering installing large format wall tile onto drywall, that is in a non moisture area. I was concerned that the drywall would not be as strong as backerboard and could possibly cause structural failure. However MongoCT makes an excellent point, that large format tile with the same square footage as any other tile will share the same weight. "🎵 I can see clearly now, the rain is gone 🎵🎵👍👍

Thank you Sophie. I have a couple of questions. Does the TCNA handbook actually state spot bonding is prohibited? Or does it simply state where spot bonding is an acceptable installation; W215, W260, W215 Stone & W260 Stone, none of which apply here? If it does address the issue of being a poor & problematic installation method therefore prohibited in all cases except the 4 above installations, when was this added to the handbook? I read in 2014 people were still calling for it to be prohibited. Also how could I tell what type of adhesive this is? I’m going to go after the installing company to take it down, (replacing any they break at their expense) & installing it correctly. Each tile weighs over 12 lbs & it may not but chances sound pretty darn good sometime down the road the installation is going to fail. Alternatively I may look into getting the $1952 I paid for installation refunded & since if it’s fails I will have wasted my money for the cost of the tile because of their installation I may try to get the $2550 I paid for the tile back as well. Before I do that though I want to have my ducks in a row. The tile was installed end of November 2016. Any further advice you can offer as to my potential claim against them would be helpful as well. Not legal advice of course but in terms of the legitimacy of the potential problems we face with the tile & the illegitimacy of their installation.

We're interested in a 17x26" Porcelanosa tile. Would this be a good size and would the best layout be vertically because of the 17" width for our 34" shower? I'd say look for the same tile in a smaller size. 17" + 17" would give you one seam /grout line down the center of the shower, which would be odd looking. You may be looking to eliminate grout lines by using a large-scale tile -- and that's a good goal -- but this large tile and your small shower are out of proportion. As for LVT, I'm using it in my bathroom too. Why? Because I'm concerned about aging-in-place, and I want to use the same product throughout the whole house /avoid transitions and thresholds. True, I could use the same shower tile in the bathroom and still have the same number of products /transitions ... but I'd rather go with the softer, knee-and-hip-friendly product. Finally, I have tiled bathrooms now, and I don't enjoy the cold underfoot. Yes, I could go with heated tiles, but why not just use a product that isn't so cold in the first place? My linoleum kitchen floor isn't "cold" in the same way as tile.