Oh boy, check this out. Hi I’m Tim Carter from AsktheBuilder.com, thanks for joining me today. I’m in this room that we’re remodeling and we have to extend a tile floor into this area that’s not finished. Check that out, the reason that happened is just about ten days ago, right where I’m standing, there used to be a wall that went all the way the ceiling, we took it down so that the two rooms will now become one. The challenge is this, check this out, if you go ahead and start to lay the tile going this direction behind me, and you think that you’ll be able to line it up with your eye, making sure that he lines are perfect, it’s not going to happen. You’ll make a mistake every time.
You actually need to create a line on this concrete slab that you actually lay the tile to so that you know that those rows are straight. And here’s one way that I’ve done it in the past, works pretty well. You can use just a regular chalk line. This one happens to have no chalk on it yet. If you’re going to use one that already got chalk, make sure you pull the chalk line out and snap it a couple of times to get as much chalk off as possible. Let’s check this out, come here.
All you have to do is open up the chalk line and you, you hook the chalk line, right to the under side of the tile. You can see right here, I took the end of the chalk line, hooked it to the underside of this tile, pull the string tight, and then what I do, now look real closely here, I go ahead right here and I get the string lined up right with that edge of the tile. That’s exactly what I want to see right there so I know it’s right. And I take the chalk line and I come back down here and what I can do first of all is do this, it’s like I’m actually going to use the line, the string line and I can see by just hovering it over the edge of this tile, that these tiles are perfectly in line, that’s exactly what we want to see.
So now what we’ll do is I can make a line right here, right underneath the string line on the concrete slab so we know where that point is. We come back here and then I line up the string, looking right down the string, put my eye right over it, and you can see that I can swing the string left and right until it’s right at the edge of the tile, what you do is right there, you can see it right over there to the tile, I put the string down here, make a mark. And if you take a heavy object like a full pant can, I can sit it on the string so now the string wont move and I can go ahead and make marks right underneath the string and a couple of places. And then if you want, you can take a straight edge, like a four foot level. Connect those lines; you’ve got your straight line to start laying your tile.
I’m Tim Carter for AsktheBuilder.com. If you want o discover more home improvement tips, go to AsktheBuilder.com.
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