Cutting Travertine Tile at Home
Just this weekend we completed our first ever client project by way of installing a closet bar area for a couple about our age here in Durham. The bar ended up being very similar to the one in our home.
After spending many many hours in their home drilling, painting, groutng and reminding them that I’m not a builder or a handyman – I think it came out pretty well considering it was my first outside project.
More pictures will be up later this week when all is really done. We’ve got a few touch-ups to take care of before its close-up.
In the meantime, as the title of this post might indicate I do have some photos of the countertop tile to share. You’ll remember that we put together this little inspiration board for our new friends.
The tile we chose for the counter (we have a second tile that went up on the backsplash) are 4×4″ travertine tiles from Lowe’s that came in boxes of 9 for only $4.48. This tile has a pretty high end look for something so inexpensive.
We knew that each box covers about one square foot so we scooped up 12 for this project. You’ll see later that the countertop we’re working with is preety l-o-n-g.
In order to save time when physically in our client’s home we measured out a space on our dining room table – which is oh so beaten up anyway and will only get better with some tile scratches and dents - and laid out their tile pattern ahead of time, making any cuts where needed.
We were amazingly lucky in that the depth of the bar space will be exactly 5 tiles even. However, we didn’t want the look of square, square, square, square all across the counter. We wanted a pattern that was a bit more interesting, and that would hide any lines that were not perfectly straight.Remember this is our first time to do this for someone else, so I was pretty much a little sweat machine throughout the entire process.
My sweaty little self decided to stagger every other row of tiles, cutting the end tiles in half. We think it looks pretty snazzy and makes things more interesting for sure.
There wasn’t even that much extra effort needed for cutting either. I was worried when purchasing the travertine that the tile was going to be too thick for a hand held tile cutter so I picked up a larger model than my little nippers, last seen here. It uses the exact same principle. Score and snap. Worked like a charm. By the way we used a $19.99 MD 14′” tile cutter from Lowe’s for this.
If you do this at home just make sure to wear some sweet glasses or goggles, and also score and snap the smooth tops side of the travertine. We tried the underside which is much rougher, and well – the snapping made it kind of crumble.
And no one needs that.
We’ll be back soon with more details on this first little adventure. Including more notes on planning, shopping, receipt keeping, installing and the best stuff – the before and after photos. But for now you just get 538 words about scoring, snapping and sweating. Sounds a little creepy.
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