Hardwood vs. Wood Looking Tile
- Thread starter jerometl
- Start date
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Lol, that's not true, who ever told you this does not know tiles. The main purpose of grout is just to filled the voids and seal joints between tiles.
The guideline for regular porcelain tile's grout width is 1/8" and for natural stones is 1/16". For rectified porcelain tiles, you can do 1/16". I think the builder like to keep with standard 1/8" grout line because it's cheaper, easy to do, and easy to hide imperfections.
For anything less than 1/16", your porcelain tile or natural stone tiles need to have very consistent dimension, very precise cut, and very high quality, otherwise lippage will occur. Also when the grout line are 1/16" or thinner, it take a very experience installer to do a good installation. It's very labor intensive and more expensive to do a grout line 1/16" or less. I think OpenSky got an incredible deal for his tile.
Sadly we both don't have much experience with tiles to know better. My wife complained about it (thought it was BS), but since she never liked the design studio experience from the get go I just thought she was being biased. We did check the tech specifications of Daltile and it does say minimum grout required is 3/16". So maybe partly it has something to do with the product too.
irvinehomeowner
Well-known member
Not sure if you posted this but what was the cost comparison of wood tile vs. engineered wood (materials and labor)?
irvinehomeowner
Well-known member
Paging ZeroLot... what was Venetian's per square foot price again?
irvinehomeowner
Well-known member
I like that Floor Expo does all types of surface. Did you ask them about their install/material cost for engineered wood?
GH said:
Lol, that's not true, who ever told you this does not know tiles. The main purpose of grout is just to filled the voids and seal joints between tiles.
The guideline for regular porcelain tile's grout width is 1/8" and for natural stones is 1/16". For rectified porcelain tiles, you can do 1/16". I think the builder like to keep with standard 1/8" grout line because it's cheaper, easy to do, and easy to hide imperfections.
For anything less than 1/16", your porcelain tile or natural stone tiles need to have very consistent dimension, very precise cut, and very high quality, otherwise lippage will occur. Also when the grout line are 1/16" or thinner, it take a very experience installer to do a good installation. It's very labor intensive and more expensive to do a grout line 1/16" or less. I think OpenSky got an incredible deal for his tile.
lnc said:
Sadly we both don't have much experience with tiles to know better. My wife complained about it (thought it was BS), but since she never liked the design studio experience from the get go I just thought she was being biased. We did check the tech specifications of Daltile and it does say minimum grout required is 3/16". So maybe partly it has something to do with the product too.
Regarding to grout line width, there's nothing wrong with 3/16 or 1/8. Some time the wide grout line is part of the "look" of the floor. It's just that for the wood looking porcelain tile, you want the look of hard wood floor and the benefit of porcelain tile, thin grout line is a must in order to successfully mimic the look of hard wood floor.
I often see it in the model home with very nice wood-looking tile but the wide grout line just kill the effect and instantly reminds people that it is not real hard wood.
I often see it in the model home with very nice wood-looking tile but the wide grout line just kill the effect and instantly reminds people that it is not real hard wood.
irvinehomeowner
Well-known member
When we had our kitchen tile counter grout regrouted, the company said they used a self-sealing urethane grout.
Not sure if works for floor installations but here is the link (and it says can be used on floor tiles):
http://www.bostik-us.com/our-brands/quartzlock-2™
Not sure if works for floor installations but here is the link (and it says can be used on floor tiles):
http://www.bostik-us.com/our-brands/quartzlock-2™
