How to Tile a Shower Floor and Curb

Hi, I'm Mark Donovan from HomeAdditionPlus.com and today I'm going to show you how to tile a shower floor. So before actually installing a tile floor in to a shower installer we need you to first build a mortar shower pan and that’s what I’ve got here basically as you can see. It’s a flexible membrane liner that sandwich in between two layers of mortar. And now we’re going to do is simple apply that scheme code where layer of thin cement mortar on to the shower floor pan and it will inset these tiles onto the shower floor pan.

So I'm laying some thin set of mortar in and trowel it again with a 3/16 x 5/32 inch trowel. Because this is such a small shower only about 2-1/2 x 2-1/2 square feet and I'm know it’s square. I'm starting in one corner working my old clay across. This has been a large surface area. I would have found a straight, horizontal and vertical axis. This is started from the middle out, but again this is a small shower we’re going to work from the corner edge across.

Now I made my instant mortar bed and I simply lay my two-inch tile into the base with that and press down firm. You don't want to use a really thick notch trowel or else you want it having that inset more come up and through the craps. The nice thing about this one by one sheets of tile is that they have automatically space so that you don't have to suit it individually space every tile. I just want to make sure that you have a nice consisted seam between the square sheets that’s consistent with this spacing on the other tiles that are in the center of the sheets.

So what I'm doing is working my way across that floor shower. I cut out a square opening that will go back and fill it later with individual tiles around the showers drain assembly itself. And then along the wall I'm checking the spacing. It’s just shy of a foot so I'm basically going to have a cut a raw of tiles approximately inch off on the end to make sure we can fit nicely and have about an 8-inch gap up we can stay a shower wall.

Aright, now that we put in the shower floor tile everywhere except around the drain all we’re doing is nipping tile to put it in place nice and tight around the drain. And again I'm using a pair of nippers and just basically removing little pieces accordingly to basically put in place around the shower. We’re going to repeat this for all the remaining tiles around here then put some then aside and worry behind him and then shower floor will be done.

So now I have cut all the small tiles. I'm just basically back biting the back of these small pieces with a small putty knife and then laying them in around the drain. We just continue to work away around. Right now that we’ve completed the tiling the shower floor we’ll move on the curb to wrap up this tiling project. Alright so what we’ve done on the curb is we have attached the outside tile pieces. These are 12 inch wide tile pieces. to the front of the curb and the curb was a little bit curbed in so we have to cut it, bow it down a little bit by putting a little inset mortar in.

And now I’ve cut couple tile pieces to go on top and will put the inset mortar in to hold in place and all we need to do is put the final pieces of tile on the backside of the curb and this project will be nearly done.

Alright, we put an inset mortar in and now we’re simple going to drop these pieces of tile into place and I'm pushing him in nicely and make sure your gaps now. The thing too we want to keep in mind is that one that make sure that there is slight tilt toward the shower stall area so water won’t run outside of the shower stall when it’s finish. So you want those slight levels on it but again just a gentle slope inwards towards the shower as you go.

Alright so we move on to the final inside curb pieces and this will be done. Sometimes it’s necessary to bath for tiles which are what I'm doing right now to ensure that there is a good bond between the substrate material which in this case is the curb and the back of the tile. So we’re basically using our tile to fill in all the voids in the back of the tile. And we can place the tile onto the substrate in areas and I'm just kind of press and fit in to place.

So we completed tile in the shower floor and the curb. We’ll let this set up overnight and tomorrow we can come back and grab it. If you have other home improvement questions visit us at HomeAdditionPlus.com today.