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Home & Interior Design books:
Setting Tile (Fine Homebuilding)

Today's info: "Best is reviewing several books first prior to purchasing at Amazon.com."

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Manufacturer: Taunton

List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $12.76
You Save: $ 7.19 ( 36% )
(prices subject to change)

Average Customer Ratings:

Michael Byrne's Setting Tile is packed with more than enough information for those thinking of taking on a tile job in their home. It is so detailed and thorough that it serves as a Tile 101 introduction for those interested in entering the trade full-time or simply improving their skills and knowledge. Byrne opens this revised and updated version of his previous effort with a brief description of how tile was made 6,000 years ago. Granted, the history lesson may not help someone who's planning to tile a kitchen counter, but Byrne's passion and interest for the subject pay off for the reader in other ways. He advises his readers, for example, that even after they've found the right tile for the bathroom floor or kitchen counter--the one that is just the right color and that the manufacturer recommends--to take those tiles and put them through a few of their own tests. Rub it with your favorite frying pan to see how easily it's marked up and, in turn, cleaned off. Scuff it with junior's hiking boots to see how it endures a day in the life. "I tell my customers in the end that, no matter what grade of tile they select, they can be the best judge of a tile's suitability." Byrne devotes chapters to materials, tools and safety, troubleshooting and repairs, and surface preparation. And in his chapter stressing the importance of doing a proper layout long before setting that first tile, Byrne also gives the reader a few clever ways to check levels, straightedges, and carpenter's squares for accuracy. This is a highly detailed book loaded with technical information that relies equally on photos and illustrations. It's also more about materials and tile samples than completed jobs. Don't buy this book if you're looking for glossy color photos of pristine tile jobs; buy it if you want to learn how to correctly install such jobs. --John Russell


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 698
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Taunton
Manufacturer: Taunton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 260
Publication Date: 1995-05-30
Publisher: Taunton
Release Date: 1995-05-30
Studio: Taunton


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Tile Your World: John Bridge's New Tile Setting Book
• Drywall: Professional Techniques for Great Results
• Working with Tile (Taunton's Build Like a Pro)
• Tiling Floors: with Michael Byrne (Fine Homebuilding DVD Workshop)
• Renovating a Bathroom (For Pros by Pros Series)


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Tile like a master -
This is a great book for learning to set tile. Don't rely on the info from your local hardware store... Get this book and learn how to do it right!

Setting Tile -
Excellent book apparently. I got a copy for a friend who is tiling her bathroom. She thought it was a wonderful and informative publication and a must for anyone who is doing something of this nature.

Great book for me - Novice/JOAT -
We recently built our new home & I used this book & Tile Your World to do all the tile work. One of our best & proudest features is the masterbath I built with lg garden tub and oversized corner dual head shower with dual niche all tiled together - We love it. I can't believe I was able to do it all with friends & family and alot of sweat/work.

Saved thousands over best few estimates. I see why the labor is so pricy now....

Recommend both books.

Michael Byrnes's Work is Excellent -
Michael Byrne's work in both his book "Setting Tile" and his DVD "Tiling Floors with Michael Byrne" are excellent resources for beginners, and were I an experienced tile setter, I would say so for those folks, too.

As a complete novice I recently completed my first tile project, re-doing my bathroom, some 50 square feet. In my opinion it turned out very well considering it was a first time effort. I relied heavily on Mr. Byrnes's works. That would be small by most accounts, but let me assure you, for me, it was large. I am in the process of doing another 500 square feet of work on a plywood substrate. After that I have another 500 feet downstairs on a concrete slab to do.

He makes it simple for anyone to understand. These works will remain life-long resources in my personal library.

While it is not possible to cover everything in any works like these, some areas I would suggest for improvement are some more clarification on areas around door jams in terms of doing the tiling around those, trimming them. More information on toilet removal and installation would have been helpful. The toilet borders on plumbing and that is a subject unto itself though. One more area that would be helpful is the area of cementitious backerboard. There are several kinds on the market and each has its own idiosyncracies.

But if one is considering undertaking a project like this, you can always rely on Amazon.com for additional material.

Works by Taunton Press, the publisher of these media are also recommended. But again, no one resource can be everything. And finally, there is no substitute to finding reliable people to talk things through.

Again, I rate Mr. Byrnes's work as 5 Star.

Not for the beginner -
Like most Taunton Press publications, Setting Tile skews abit toward the art side of its trade, and it glosses over quite a few things that an absolute novice, or even a fairly skilled worker in another trade, needs in order to get a good result. As other have pointed out, he doesn't go into using mastics or epoxy-based mortars. But those seem like decisions based on his experience with the materials. He simply uses thinset. Enough said.

One ommission that did seem a little odd was the lack of information about working with wet-wall installations. He only uses backer board, which for a worker/writer who is so thorough and skilled seems strange.

Especially given the fact that he does such a great job of explaining, step by step, how to build a shower pan, which is a fussy, finicky, yet back-breaking job if there ever was one.

One other fault (and this may be a fault of Taunton books in general): he doesn't help me anticipate errors. For example: Mr. Byrne recommeds that you fur out the backer board above a shower pan lining so that the board can hang over the lining without getting bumped out. And he recommends butter the back of the board with thinset where it mates with the lining (since you can't drive screws through the board as it would pierce the lining).

Now a non-idiot (not me!) would know that the mortar would tend to push the backer board out, especially in the corners where the lining is folded to three times its typical thickness. Such a non-idiot would fur out a little extra and use a little less mortar.

But not me: I butter the hell out of the back of the backer board and by the time the mortar set the board's bottom was out of pumb a good 3/16 of inch. Not a huge deal, until you try to make the tials look nice and perfect.

So some idiot warnings would be nice. Sort of a follow my advice, but here are some things to watch out for.

Then again, no taunton book I've ever owned (quite a few) does a good job with newbies.

Regardless, this is a good, solid look at installing tile, especially installing and designing complex patterns. But you might need to augment it with something from Time Life say ;-)

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