Tile Floors for Dummy Remodelers

Grout lines and spacing of  floor tiles

Sometimes even the simplest tasks seem to be beyond the mental acuity of our freelancers. Then again, the mistakes they make may be a due to a lack of experience, preparation, or both. We think that's especially true in the case of many of the college students and stay-at-home moms who penned articles for the Demand Media sites (now under the Leaf Group umbrella) in the old days: they lacked the basic knowledge to know where they'd screwed up... For example, we submit young criminal justice grad Andrew Todd, who penned "How to Calculate Tile Size to Feet"¹ for eHow.com.

We realize that the "question" doesn't make much sense, but still we differ with Todd's interpretation. Andrew figured that the OQ wanted to know how many square feet a single tile covers, and proceeded to explain (rather long-windedly, we think) telling the reader to measure length and width in feet and then to

"Multiply the length in feet by the width in feet to determine the square footage of one tile, in feet"...

...which may be mathematically accurate, but sure is lousy grammar. However, Andrew started out by telling his readers that "To determine the coverage provided by one tile and to ensure that you order the proper amount of tile to complete the installation, you must convert the tile sizes from inches to feet." Never mind that the box the tile came in will most likely have the coverage stated on it... But Andrew, in his rush to pick up that stipend, apparently failed to look at the nearest tile floor. That's why he never mentions the grout...

Yep, the grout: the smaller the tiles, the more important that quarter-inch grout strip between them. Just for fun, lets see how far off Andrew's method would be for laying 4" x 4" tile on a 20' x 15' floor. Andrew's method says that a tile covers 0.111 ft², so you would need 300 / 0.111 = 2702 tiles. If, however, you use a simple tile calculator and specify a grout width of 0.25", you get a result of 2392 tiles. Oh, and by the way, Andrew? those 4 x 4 tiles are typically sized to allow for a ¼-inch gap between them: they're really 3-7/8 inches on a side: did you wonder why? No, you didn't. But you should have...

Because some inexperienced kid probably thought tile laying is a job for undocumented immigrants, he didn't bother to look up how one actually does the work; he just assumed he was smarter than the person asking the question... not. In fact, Todd isn't all that smart, he's our Dumbass of the Day!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_7816521_calculate-tile-size-feet.html

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