Tile baseboards are simply baseboards that are made entirely of tiles. They can add character to your room with an existing tiled floor and, unlike wooden skirting boards, which need to be nailed down and painted or varnished for their final finish; tile baseboards are simply glued to the foot of the wall.
To get a good mix of size and pattern for your tile baseboards, the easiest way is to use exactly the same tiles as you laid earlier, so if you decide to do this, buy enough to cover the perimeter of your wall in the first stage. Pavement preparation stages. If you take a 12-inch floor tile, for example, to get an average 4-inch-high baseboard, you simply need to cut the tile into three equal sections.
Since these are straight cuts, using a ceramic tile breaker would be ideal for the job, provided of course you are working with ceramic tile. The other best option would be the electric wet tile saw, but this would definitely take more time to prepare the cuts, as well as giving you uneven width cuts. If you use this method, compensate for the width of the wet tile saw blade. It will remove anything between an extra 1/16″ and 1/8″ of an inch from the fully cut tile, and can make your pieces irregular in size.
To calculate the number of tiles you need for your baseboards if you’re using the same style of floor tile, simply count the number of tiles you have along each wall, add the total, then divide by three to get your number. When laying them on the wall, be sure to keep the floor grout lines continuous by projecting them up into the tile baseboards. If you do it the other way by laying a tile baseboard directly over where a grout line ends, then you’ll have something that looks very strange. Match each baseboard tile in line with each floor tile.
To stick them to the wall, the best thing I find to use is an all-purpose construction adhesive product known as PL Premium. It’s about $5 bucks for an applicator tube suitable for use with cocking guns, and it’s a fantastic glue to work with that will pretty much instantly stick anything to anything. That includes your fingers, so apply it and use it carefully. This brand may not be available in your region or country, but there are sure to be alternatives and your local hardware store will soon point you in the right direction with advice.
A couple of other options for adhering tile baseboards to a wall are regular silicone or ceramic tile adhesive. Normal hammering doesn’t really have very good adhesive properties and the tiles may have a tendency to slip. However, pre-mixed ceramic tile adhesive works well with wallcovering applications, which tile baseboards really do, but as long as it never comes into contact with water.
To apply this, simply take a V-notched trowel and “butter” the adhesive onto the tile, spreading it evenly and then setting it in place. However, it can be much more involved than simply spraying a line of construction adhesive with a hammer gun, but it is still very effective in successfully bonding wall tiles nonetheless.
