Tiling Dining Room; Backerboard, Costs

I have finally finished placing 1/4th inch thickness backerboard in the entire dining room, with an exception to a 1 by 1 ft piece that is diagonal. All the roofing tiles are under and have leveled out the room. It certainly took more roofing tiles than I anticipated. So far I have bought 3 packages of roofing tiles and placed 11 backerboards on the floor.

Total rough material costs so far...

25*3+ 9*11= 174

This does not include any tools used on the project. Tools used: level, utility cutter, drill (for screws-stopped squeaking).

I am anticipating buying a trowel for mortar, smaller soft trowel for grout, sponge(s), and a hand saw for cutting out wood pieces where vertical molding will need to be removed for tile. Possibly another 40 dollars.

A large tub of premixed mortar (a bad deal vs. mixing your own) will be 30 bucks. I will buy the premixed stuff as I am not experienced enough to review good vs. poorly made mortar. I may need 2 buckets (large) for this project.


We will be using a fairly common tile that Lowes sells, a Porcelain Venetian. Since we may run this tile on the entire floor, we have to choose something that will always be in stock. We remembered this tile type several years ago, so it is a safe bet for this project. And Venetian stone will look great when I spill tomato sauce on the dining room floor. Very authentic.

Tiling Dining Room Month 2

Dining Room Update,

It has been a solid month since we ripped out the carpet in the room and now we finally have the backerboard placed. Initially I thought only one part of the room had a slant, but to my discovery two portions of the floor sagged with the middle plateauing out.

So far on the project I have bought two packages of roofing asphalt shingles and 8 backerboards. The plan is to use two tile sizes as shown below, (taken from another blog).

I removed the wood trim along the floor, which is sanded and will be replaced and repainted once the tile is placed. Next weekend, hopefully we can start the tiling process. Of the problems solved so far, minimized the creeking by adding extra screws in floor, placed shingles to level out floor. And bought a nice sharp edge for flooring materials to score backerboard and asphalt shingles.

If we have success, the wood floor in the entry way (photo above) will be removed and tiling will continue on the entire first floor.

Always with a level in hand, making sure the floor is level is key to this tiling operation.