You can add the elegance
of natural stone to your bathroom without the steep cost of custom design and
highly skilled professional installation. Now natural stone is as affordable as
it is beautiful. Home centers and tile shops carry a huge selection of marble,
limestone and granite for the same price as regular ceramic tile. And the
installation techniques are virtually the same as for ceramic. The only special
tool you need is a wet saw with a diamond blade, which you can rent for $40 per
day at any tile dealer or tool rental store. In fact, you can buy an
inexpensive but adequate diamond blade wet saw for as little as
$100.
In this article, we’ll
walk you through the basic tiling process, start to finish, including layout
techniques, cutting and drilling and tips for setting it accurately. You don’t
need advanced skills for this project. Tile work is mostly a matter of careful
planning and attention to detail. If you’ve worked with ceramic tile, you can
work with stone tile.
The tile for our tub
project cost $900 and additional materials ran about $150. Depending on the
stone you choose, the cost of this project could range from $250 to $2,500.
Expect to spend at least two days doing the installation work.
Tip
Protect the tub! Tubs are easily chipped and scratched, and expensive to
repair. Cover the tub with tape around the edges, and lay a 58-in. long piece
of 1/2-in. plywood over rigid insulation or heavy cardboard on the tub rim.
Replace it with a dropcloth during tiling, and check frequently in the bottom
of the tub for debris that might scratch the finish.
Design Options
For our tub surround, we
chose polished 12-in. square marble tile and unpolished 1-in. square limestone
accent tiles. We cut the 4-in. square accent tiles and 3 x 12-in. border tiles
from the 12-in. marble. You can mix and match stone or buy ready-made patterns
at tile stores. Tile dealers usually have sample displays where you can find
ideas, or they’ll steer you to designers who can guide you through the vast
maze of materials. Just keep a few basics in mind: Lay out each wall on graph
paper, tile for tile; start the pattern from a center line (Photo 5); and
use tiles that are all the same thickness and that use the same grout. Plan to
use unsanded grout for grout lines up to 1/8 in. wide and sanded grout for
wider lines. The grout lines in our pattern ranged from 1/16 in. to 1/8
in.
Prices for natural stone
range from $2 per sq. ft. to $200 per sq. ft. But keep in mind that expensive
stone isn’t necessarily better. It’s just less common. Granite is much harder
and more durable than marble and limestone, but curves and holes are tougher to
cut and require somewhat different techniques. You have to use diamond-blade
tools only, not the carbide-grit hole saws and jigsaw blades we show here for
marble.
