Shortly we'll be releasing a large number of "How to" guides on our website, so as a taster of what's to come, here's a few important tips that will help you on your way when undertaking a small tiling job for the first time.

• It’s much more difficult to start this job than to finish it. Psychologically, it’s hard to get yourself to demolish your own house. Just get a hammer and destroy some tile, cut out some old carpet. Once you’ve reached the point of no return, it’s much easier to continue. Your house can take it.
• Remove all of your bathroom doors before starting. I know you think you can get away with just closing and opening the doors as needed, but trust me: removing the doors is easier.
• Ripping out carpet, pad, and tack strips is extremely easy. Don’t fall for it. This is a trick to get you to relax your guard so you’ll be totally demoralized when you try to remove tiles.
• Removing old tile is much more difficult. There are tools that can help but we found that an old flat-head screwdriver and a hammer worked very quickly. Use the hammer to wedge the tip of the screwdriver under a tile until it cracks. Remove and repeat. It goes pretty fast.
• If you’ve got cement fiber board under the tile, do not try to remove it by demolishing it with a hammer. Find all of the nails or screws holding it down and remove those first. Then the board comes up very easily.
• Ignore the know-it-all at the home improvement warehouse who says you need a pro-high-power-diamond-tip-bladed-mega-buck saw to cut backer board. You don’t. Get the kind that you can score and snap. Get a scoring tool though and don’t try to do it with a utility knife. The backer board scores and snaps easily.
• You will spend a lot of time on your knees. Get decent knee pads with an extra-wide strap or two straps. Avoid “value” pads that only use a single strap. They get behind your knees, hurt, and you won’t use them.
• Cement comes in 50 pound bags. Only mix half of it at a time. If you mix the whole bag, you’ll end up having to buy a new bucket and another 50 pound bag of cement because it hardened in the bucket because you were tiling too slowly because it was your first time. Plus, it’s easier to mix.
• Get someone to help you. It makes the job go much faster if one person lays cement and another person comes behind to place and clean tiles. Plus, you’ll feel better knowing you’re not making mistakes alone.
• If it’s a small job, just measure the tiles you need to cut and get the home improvement store to cut them for you.
• Grouting is much easier than tiling. But buy a regular grout float and an offset grout float. The regular float won’t work under counters.
• Cement and grout clean up pretty easily. Don’t stress about making a little bit of a mess.
• It’s hard work and it’s going to take you longer than you think. We completed the job in 5 afternoons and probably put in around 15-20 hours total. If you worked faster you could theoretically do it in a weekend—but I’d count on doubling the estimated time for your first job.