window sills

Hi wayne,
for those fancy types of edges they often use a Router. Different router bits give you different effects. Can be used on almost all wood finishes. When I grow up I’ll buy myself a router, too.

Taking the wood to your local chippy might get you the desired effect. Yust take a sample along so they can see what you are trying to achieve. Hope that helped some.

Cheers

C@34

Bunnings is not really specialised in timbers- you’re better off going to Harrison or Mitre 10- a store that specialises in timbers. Yarrah is not that easy to get as it is a hardwood and is normally not in stock at hardware stores.

Celivia

Wayne,

I am not sure what you mean by “small wall tops”

The window section you are referring to is called a window nosing,and it attatches on to the window sill.It is available off the shelf in a variety of timbers,or you could run it quite easily with a router.If you are in Melbourne,you will get it from a number of places:

-O’Shea and Benett in Oakleigh stock it in pine and vic ash/tas oak,in various widths up to 225mm.

-Lewis’s in Ormond stock it in various timbers,and if you really want it off the shelf in Jarrah,they will be the best bet

-Provans in clifton hill stock it also but there stock may be limited to just pine (clear and finger jointed)

Pine is a suitable option if you are just going to paint it.I think it would also be available in MDF for a paint finish.

The problem you will have if you buy it off the shelf is that the two ends will have square cuts,and not have the bullnose returned.you could do this with a sharp plane and sandpaper,or a belt sander if you don’t have a router,but it may be easier to just borrow a router or have someone run it all for you.

As for Bunnings,I’d give them a miss unless you need a plastic bucket or a few nails.They aren’t cheap,their staff generally don’t know what they are talking about,and their customer service is poor.Convenience because of their store saturation is about all they have going for them.

Tools

Yeah, I’m with Start on this one (don’t come up with much original stuff do I?),

I worked as a labourer for a tiler once (way back when I was a little boy) and the thing he used to tell me that people wanted always made him shake his head. “ People have no idea about continuity” he’d say. Well this is what I have learned:
1.Scirting boards ALWAYS go on last – they hide crooked walls and poorly cut tiles!
2.First thing you do is get a chalk line and mark your starting room corner to corner (gives you that cross in the middle). This is where you start, diagonal tiles allways look better than straight tiles because they contrast the edging!
3. Start from the centre going out to the edges and then decide how wide the edging tiles are going to be (usually 0.5 a tile). This helps plan for what tiles need cutting and how many!
4. Never put the edging accros a door way UNLESS you want to stop tiling at that doorway! Just follow the walls for as long and as many rooms as you want to tile with those tiles.
5. Continue the diagonal patern out of the first room into the next and the next and the next…… until you are finished or you change the tiles.
6. Always waterproof you grout!
7. The customer is right, even if they are wrong they are right. They pay the bills! Just try to help them understand the best way to do it.

Interesting Q.
Depending on the colour or type of paint you are using. I have used a single coat using oil based paint but usually do more with water based paints. Oil based paints I find are stickier (if that word exists) and quite often take more knocks before showing damage. And you know that they are going to be knocked hard, they always are.

When carpeting a room, the scirtingboards go on first! Carpet layers have an extra row of nail boards that they place inside the scriting boards boundary onto which they ‘hook’ the carpet.

Hope the above helps, just what my feeble mind can recall.[biggrin]

Cheers

C@34

Waynel2,

the only tile cutters I saw/cleaned were manual ones! If the electric can’t cut on the diagonal then hire it and buy or hire the manual one as well! This way you can do the manual cut on the diagonal and the rest, which is most likely the majority anyways, can be done on the electric tile cutter.

As for the scirting boards, they blend them in. That is there are two methods that I saw:

1. when the tile section is done, the extra high of the tiles was removed (by shaving or cutting) from the bottom of the scirting boards. The carpet hides the fact that you had two different hight in scirting boards. Using a work bench and guided with a fine (or finer) blade will give you a neat cut.

2. One hight level for all the scirting boards was used and they used a spirit level to keep them at the same hight. So in the carpet section, the scirting board isn’t right on the floor! Agin the carpet hid most of the ‘blunders’.

From memory, the old guy I worked for used the first method. I had to sweep up al the shavings [angry2]. If you are using one type of tile thru most of the house then you only need to set your cutting distance once!
Then again, once you go thru a door way the door jamb will hide the true hight of each individual rooms scirting boards anyway!

Let me know how you get on, because I really had to pull the cobwebs of that one![blush2]

Cheers

C@34

AS long as I don’t have to clean up after you!

and please do send photos, I’ve sent you an email so that if you can’t post them here you can send them thru and I can see what you have done. I feel like I’m part of this job, with out any of the dirty parts of it. Hehehe.

Cheers

C@34

Hi Waynel2,

I can’t actually remember whether there were any rules as to where to start, so this’d be one of those common sense moments.

I would probably pick the easiest corner to start with, because it would give you some experience in cutting and laying so when you ge to the harder corners you already have some experience under your belt (so to speak).
I do remember him always putting in 45 degree angles into the corners! So working thru the process of laying he would:

1. Mark the centre ‘X’ (chalk-line corner to corner);
2. cut the corner tiles (he used half a tile for the border, width wise) and layd that out;
3. he would then lay out FROM THE CENTRE and mark the tiles that needed cutting ONCE he reached the border (be prepared there will be some little triangles in the corners);
4. He would then start spreading the goop and lay the tiles, making sure he works to wards the door he is going to continue thru to the rest of the house.[cigar]
5. Door ways that lead outside or where the tiles stop, he’d keep border tiles at the same ‘inside starting edge’ but let the outside edge go to the border (ie: they wouldn’t be ‘true’ half tiles, but rather tiles with little chunks cut out to accomodate the door frame, etc). So they would go right to the edge of that door (ie: to the lip of the outside door).

I hope that makes sense!

Just a note, Do you have those little spacers? As they make the perfect helping tool to keep you honest and in a straight line! AND you can grout over the top of them from memory.

Cheers

C@34

Oh dear….where to start….

whether to fix skirting prior to tiling or not is a matter of opinion.With 20 years of experience in building,I would suggest you fix the skirtings before you tile.If you go the other way,you will find that you will have gaps between the tile and skirt all around the room.Even “professional”tilers don’t manage to get all the tiles perfectly flat,and all it takes is for a few tiles to be slightly out of line,and you won’t be able to get the skirt to sit hard down to the tiles.If you are worried about uneven cuts in tiles layed against the skirt,clamp a stop on to your tile cutter,and if you push the tiles against this,all cuts will be the same.It isn’t that hard really.You shouldn’t need to cut tiles with an electric cutter,unless they are porcelain or marble,and then you would need quite an expensive tool to perform the cut satisfactorily.The DTA cutter you mentioned will adequately cut most tiles you would use.You may fin that you will need a 100 mm grinder with a diamond blade to cut out notches or things like around architraves and door jambs.

Skirting on top of tiles will not disguise crooked walls.If the walls are out,they are out!Just make sure to measure and cut each tile individually if they are out.

Chalking a line from corner to corner will give you the centre of the room (if your room is square/rectangular)but it won’t necessarily give you a 45 degree line unless your room is perfectly square.Following this with your tiles will mean you will have odd shaped cuts along each wall.DIY books usually say to start from the middle of a room and work your way out.However,professional tilers will rarely work this way.You need to lay the tiles out to work out what cuts you will have against walls,cupboards,in door ways etc.You don’t want to end up with small cuts to finish with.If you are continuing the tiles through to other rooms,you also need to consider the cuts you will have in those rooms as well.If you are running the tiles diagonally,it is highly unlikely that you will end up with even cuts in the second and subsequent rooms.

As far as painting skirting goes,to achieve a solid colour you need two coats,regardless of whether you are using acrylic or enamel paint.You may find it easier to put the first coat on before fixing them to the wall,but remember you will need to fill nail holes,undercoat and first coat before you can put a coat over the whole lot in the one hit.You can’t satisfactorily touch up just the nail holes.You will probably find that you will also run some no more gaps at the skirt/wall junction….anothe reason to paint afterwards.If you insist on using only one coat,I would add a paint conditioner such as Floetrol…you will be glad you did.