Residential Tile Installation

What Residential Tile Installation Covers

Residential tile work spans a wide range of surfaces and rooms. We install tile on bathroom floors and walls, kitchen floors, living room and entryway floors, laundry rooms, mudrooms, covered patios, and feature walls throughout the home. Each room presents different requirements based on moisture exposure, foot traffic, and the specific substrate underneath.

Kitchen and living room floors are typically set on a concrete slab in the San Antonio area, which is a stable substrate when it is clean, flat, and free of significant cracks. We check flatness with a 10-foot straightedge before setting any large-format tile. Any variation over 1/8 inch in 10 feet needs to be addressed with floor leveler before tile goes down, because lippage (one tile edge sitting higher than the adjacent tile) becomes visible at those tolerances.

Uncoupling Membrane: When and Why

For wood subfloor installations, we typically install an uncoupling membrane such as Schluter Ditra between the subfloor and the tile. A wood subfloor expands and contracts with seasonal humidity changes, and tile set directly on plywood without a proper membrane will crack at the grout lines within a year or two. The membrane decouples the tile layer from the movement below, protecting the installation long-term. This is a step that is sometimes skipped to save time, but it is not one we skip.

Layout Planning

Before setting tile, we establish reference lines from the center of the room outward. This ensures that cut tiles at opposite walls are symmetrical, and that the most visible areas of the floor have full tiles. For diagonal layouts, we rotate the reference lines 45 degrees. Pattern tiles like herringbone or basket weave require additional layout planning to maintain the pattern through doorways and around obstacles. We dry-lay a section of the pattern before committing to thinset to catch any issues early.