One of the more challenging aspects of laying a tile floor is when you have to go across a threshold and into a next room. An example of where this might occur would be, say, in an apartment where there is a kitchen and dining room next to each other, and there is a large opening or doorway between them, but with no door.

I was taught and told it was the traditional method, to bring the tile through the threshold as much as possible, continuing the same lines and spacing as in the first room. Then, in the second room, all the tile along the shared wall had to be cut. When we got to the last wall of that room, we had to cut the entire line again. Both of those last two lines were bigger than one half of our tile squares, so we basically had to trash full tiles along both of those two lines. It was quary tile, so the cutting was a real mess and a pain! The room was over twelve feet across, so it was quite a bit of extra material we had to use. I decided to find the better mouse trap.

The next time I had a similar tile job to complete, I cut all the tile along the threshold at the same place as the tile along that wall. Then I proceeded to cut tiles into strips, approximately 2.5" to 3" wide, and long enough to cross the threshold leaving a comfortable space for the line along the shared wall in the next room. I did a bit of math and figuring so there was a fair amount of tiles, yet enough room to keep a consistent spacing between them. I think the actual width of the small tiles was about 2 11/16". Then I was able to start the next room in the focal corner along the shared wall with full tiles. We ended up with a threshold of rectangular tiles built right into the floor. It accented the threshold nicely, and the client was actually quite impressed with it.

-Rodger Kurth
Rodger has been in the building trades for over 10+ years, and specializes in construction of theatrical sets. He has also been a licensed GC and handyman in the Chicago area. Visit http://theatresets.chicagocreativedesign.com/ to see more of his work. 

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