Laying Out a Diagonal Tile Countertop

Video Transcript

I’m Lee. I have a degree in architecture and about ten years experience in the construction field and we’re laying out a diagonal countertop today. We have about the same spacing on both sides of the sink, and we’re going to start from here since this is the first point that you see when you come around the corner. You just want to center this tile. And you can do it one of two ways. I usually just estimate the amount and measure to see if I have it right. Here’s three and three quarters and almost three and three quarters so you can just scoot it back this way. It does not have to be exact, and about four…a little more than four- just scoot it that way a little bit.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to find the center of the countertop. After we kind of center the tile, find the center of the countertop. So we just want to measure the tile and see if we have it almost right. Sixteen and a half, so it’d be eight and a quarter, so that’s just about right. And it should be sixteen and a half, so eight and a quarter, so just need to move it over to about right there. You just take and split the difference of the two lines, and that’s your center. So, you want to make sure that this is all a square and laid out or you could get a forty five degree angle, or you can do it by just size. I like to do it by sight just because none of these counters are square or anything. And you get it to where it looks just about right.

Grab you some spacers because you’re going to have to lay all this out first- which will take a while- that one in the back took probably a full day of just laying out tile- cutting it, I had to make numerous cuts over and over. Ok. Lay out the spacers. Now you’re going to use a pre-chosen color. Back here we used black. Up here, we’re going to use the same color that we used at the front door. And just lay it in to where the spacers are, and you have to hold it. I’m going to put this pattern over it so that you can kind of see what you’re going for here. You’re going to have this border around the top. So the easiest way to do that is just measure if this is right. Sixteen and a quarter and you can write on your counter top if you want. And this is a twelve inch tile…it’s eleven and three-quarters, which is kind of odd. And then you have two-quarter inch spacers which you can take a half inch off from it and that will be the size of your tile.

This entire large piece of plastic is sixteen and a quarter inches. Your tile is only eleven and three quarters. Eleven and three quarter and sixteen and three quarter- and that gives you a difference of four and a quarter. And you can just count the little spaces if you need to, or however you do it. So that’s four and a quarter, and you’re going to take out a half, so that’s three and three quarters. So that would get three and three quarters. And that would be the width of the tile, or the width of the space that’s not taken up by the tile and the grout. So you take that three and three quarters and you split it into two and you have a border all around. And that’s how you would lay out the center of your diagonal countertop.

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