Help!: Different size tiles

[Lone Star]

Hi everybody,
I have a wrestled with every conceivable problem in surface preparation and today got to the point of actually putting down the first ceramic floor tiles in our Kitchen, family room and utility room.
Ah! now comes all the rewarding bit I thought: how could I be so naive?

The floor is about 44m2 in total and the tile size is given on the pack as 450 x 316. We have had these tiles for 3 years, bought from B&Q on a special offer weekend. They still stock them though.
The thing is, we bought them in two slightly different colour variations and planned to lay them alternately. Having got the first 6 down I realised that there is 1-2mm extra on the the length of the dark ones and also about 1mm extra on the width. Furthermore, when standing a light and a dark one together on a flat surface, this extra 1-2mm extra length is not consistent across the whole width of the tile, so one or other is not square, I haven't got round to working out which.

I had started laying them to a straight batten so of course, at the first joint that runs parallel to this staight edge, there was a noticeable misalignment at the corners. At the second parallel joint, I suppose it would correct itself as I was combining a short tile and a long tile in each row. But I think that the misaligned grout lines would look pretty poor, so I took up what I had laid and am giving it another coat of thinking about.

Can anybody give me any suggestions as to what they would do in this circumstance

[doug boardley]

Hi everybody,
I have a wrestled with every conceivable problem in surface preparation and today got to the point of actually putting down the first ceramic floor tiles in our Kitchen, family room and utility room.
Ah! now comes all the rewarding bit I thought: how could I be so naive?

The floor is about 44m2 in total and the tile size is given on the pack as 450 x 316. We have had these tiles for 3 years, bought from B&Q on a special offer weekend. They still stock them though.
The thing is, we bought them in two slightly different colour variations and planned to lay them alternately. Having got the first 6 down I realised that there is 1-2mm extra on the the length of the dark ones and also about 1mm extra on the width. Furthermore, when standing a light and a dark one together on a flat surface, this extra 1-2mm extra length is not consistent across the whole width of the tile, so one or other is not square, I haven't got round to working out which.

I had started laying them to a straight batten so of course, at the first joint that runs parallel to this staight edge, there was a noticeable misalignment at the corners. At the second parallel joint, I suppose it would correct itself as I was combining a short tile and a long tile in each row. But I think that the misaligned grout lines would look pretty poor, so I took up what I had laid and am giving it another coat of thinking about.

Can anybody give me any suggestions as to what they would do in this circumstance

put them in a skip!! B and Q sell rubbish tiles. Just about every thread that mentions their tiles come across this problem!

[hillhead]

As above, pure crap.
Welcome by the way.

[whitebeam]

Hi and welcome..

[grumpygrouter]

Welcome to the forums....and the problems of buying tiles from a non-specialist tile supplier. Only real solution if you really want to use them is to make sure you have quite a large grout joint....at least 5mm maybe 7mm, to allow you to "absorb" the difference in size of the tiles. Oh!, and don't rely on spacers to help, you will need to ping lines and follow them and adjust you grout joint width to suit as you go along. The bigger your grout joint the less obvious the difference will be.

[CJ]

As above........the only thing you can do if you don't want to try and return them is lay with bigger grout lines, and lay by eye.

44m is a bit toooo much to skip, so your options are rather limited

[suave]

welcome!

[foggy34]

also to add! try laying them in a brick bond pattern may help or 1/3 bond

[Rich]

Oh dear, what a pain in the neck. I think you have been given all the available advice above, that is a lot of tile and I would understand that you wouldn't want top get rid of them but you prob are not going to get the finish that you want from them so the choice is yours. If you do stick with them, follow the advice above, nice wide joint and consider a broken bond pattern. It will be a real pain to lay by eye, if you lay a tile and it doesnt sit right, try lifting it and turning it 180 degrees and seeing if it will suit the joints better that way round.

Are you using a rapid setting adhesive? I would recommend getting rid of it if you are and using a standard set.

[Lone Star]

Thank you to everybody for you helpful or candid replies. I might as well try try talking to B&Q seeing as you all think that it's a poor product. The lesson that I have learned is: " don't buy the tiles until you are ready to lay them".
As some of you have said, 44m2 is a lot to throw away so I guess that I'll have to have a go at laying by eye. I only get weekends to work on it now, so maybe finished by Christmas!. Best wishes to you all.