Seeing Rectangles

Every now and again, I'll wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmare. Not because some big monster is chasing me, but because I dream in rectangles. Rectangles that are 30cm x 60cm, coincidentally the same size as our tile. Now that they have stopped somewhat, I'm ready to discuss.

We wanted to have nearly the entire downstairs in tile, because when it's 115 degrees out, carpet doesn't help one cool down. Also, we wanted a diagonal brick pattern, which would add to the custom look of the job. Since most of you already know that Wife and I are the OCD type (hell, we even keep a Google Calendar between us), every tile had to be perfect.

Top left: front entry
Bottom left: kitchen
Bottom right: family room

I went around the entire downstairs, measuring every wall and every angle to the 1/4", measuring every wall twice to make sure I captured everything correctly. Then, I fired up my trusty graphing / CAD software and digitized every wall and angle. Remember those nightmares? Well, this must have been the start of them. On top of the digitized floor plan, I overlaid an exact 30cm x 60cm layout of rectangles, with exactly 1/8" separating in between.

Then, with my computer ninja skills, I made the floor plan and the tile layout two different layers, and I was able to move the pattern around, to help visualize how the tiles would look. Minimization of small triangles was the key.

Why go through such great lengths to map every single tile? Well, it's all about maximization of the edge pieces! Each of our presentation ends (where the tile ends with another floor surface, or is visible on a stretch of wall) has at least half of a tile. Doing this minimized the effect of having small triangles at key points, and also let us hide said triangles in places where we would have furniture.

We're almost done with laying the tile. All that's left is the laundry room, about a 5ft x 8ft room, as well as the area around the floor outlet in the kitchen. Then, on to grout!