Bill, Mongo or anyone, I'd appreciate if you could guide me on a tile issue. In our bathroom, where the entry wall meets the tub alcove, I'm wondering about the best way for our contractor to tile that wall intersection. In our existing builder-basic bathroom, there are bullnose tiles on one of the walls where the tiles meet. The owner of the tile store said not to bother with bullnose, and to have the installer miter cut the tiles where they meet. My contractor says he can certainly do the mitered installation, but his only hesitation is that it can make for a pretty sharp edge which might not be desirable in a relatively small bathroom. So I'd welcome thoughts on bullnose vs. mitering the tiles on an outside joint.

I'm thinking the same issue of an outside joint occurs when you tile a niche in the shower, so I'm curious whether that situation calls for the same or a different solution.

Thanks in advance!

-- Eric

 

Mitering glazed tile will indeed give you a sharp corner because if you do anything to ease the sharpness of the corner you can waste away the colored glazing and exposed the tile body color within.

When mitering an unglazed through-body ceramic, or a natural stone, you have a bit of leeway there. You can ease the corner a bit while keeping the tile color intact.

Mitering a corner can be tricky too. Personally, if I'm mitering a corner, I prefer it to look like a solid block of material wrapping a corner, which means I want to minimize the vertical stripe of contrasting colored grout running down the middle of that miter. The 45 degree edge of the tile needs support, so you something in there. Sometimes I'll color the grout in the miter post-installation so it better blends with the tile. That's usually more of a stone thing than a ceramic tile thing, though.

Now who's right? Your designer or your installer? I can shift into my "everyone's lazy" mode and offer the scenario you that your designer doesn't want to order you the scant 10' of bullnose you need, because the minimum order he has to make is 50', and if he has to order 50' and you only use 10', what he going to do with the remainder? charge you for the entire box and price himself out of an order? Take a hit himself and hope that he sells the remainder to someone else someday?

Or I can say that your tiler is tired, worn out, and just wants to install easy-to-do bullnose instead of having to miter all those edges and flirt with carrying a mitered corner around a wall corner. Who knows?

Some designers are great with colors, textures and patterns, but might be lacking in the technical knowledge of how some materials or installation methods work over others.

Some installers "have been doing it this way for 30 years dammit, and that's the way yours is going to get done too." He always uses bullnose on corners like yours and why should yours be any different.

I guess you'll just have to answer these questions:

1) If the edge remains sharp, is it in a location where it could cause injury? Think adults brushing past it, little kids smacking their heads. Think someone snagging piece of clothing. If so, then the edge should be eased.

2) If the edge should be eased, can it? ie, is this a glazed or unglazed material.

If the edge can be eased, then you have the option of doing that. If it can't be eased, then you need bullnose or a different material/idea altogether.

Overall I don't try to push installers to do things with materials that they are not comfortable doing. It's the best way to come up with a failed installation. But sometimes designers need to be pushed to come up with materials that can actually perform in the design that they drew up.

Lacking brevity,
Mongo