The straight curve

Have you tried to make a curve from straight pieces? It’s not exactly trivial. And hence I wonder even more what convinced me to use 60 cm tiles on a sloped bathroom floor.

The bathroom floor has multiple slopes. There are two drains in the floor. One in the shower corner and the other one underneath the warm water tank. So, there is plenty of “action” in the floor. And the wise man uses small tiles to fit neatly into the slopes. But I’m not wise (and least not always). Try to use 60 cm tiles and create a slope on the floor. Firstly, you end up with sometimes 10 mm gap under the tile which you have to fill with mortar. Unless you want to risk that the thing becomes loose and the heat from the floor heating doesn’t transfer nicely to the surface. Secondly, 60 cm rectangular shapes do not bend too nicely in two dimensions (but a circular slope around a drain does) at the same time. And therefore, you need to do a lot of adjustments not to end up with 3 mm of height difference between one tile to the next. Instead of applying the mortar to wide area, combing it through once, and slapping the tiles on, you have to adjust each tile individually (and sometimes lift it up three times again to add/remove mortar).

It took me three days to make the floor (with some creative breaks to gain back my patience). I’m pleased with the result after the joint filler and the silicon smooths the overall look and feel, but also in this case I can only recommend: Don’t do this at your home! The floor tiles are Cello Hardwood imitation 60×15 in beige for 50 Euro / package (1.1 m2).