Hi Tom

We are having our bathroom tiled with Carrera marble. We have requested our builder to fit the marble as tight as possible so that it has a ’seamless’ finish rather than with visible grout lines between tiles. The marble supplier told us that this is possible and recommends cutting playing cards to act as spacers between tiles. However, our builder does not believe that you can fit marble without a wider grout line. Please could advise on how to achieve the ’seamless’ finish and what grout should be used?

Thanks and regards,
Mariam.

Hello Mariam,

You can put the tiles tight together but you will most likely have to grind down the interior floor afterward because it is almost impossible to avoid slight lippage between the tiles. Marble tile are not cut perfectly so even a normal 1/32″ variance will feel like a lip when tiles are butted together. For this reason, I strongly do not recommend butting the tiles together.

I really don’t feel that your supplier knows what he is taking about and using a playing card is just silly. You should install them with 1/16″ joints and use non-sanded grout. For white marble, I strongly recommend using epoxy grout because white ‘cement-based’ grout is impossible to keep clean.

Your white marble has veins so there is no hope for getting a ’seamless’ look. Once the joints stop and start between the tiles, it will not appear seamless. If you have a good installer, then 1/16″ grout joints will look even better them butted joints because the joint makes for a nice ‘planned’ transitional pattern in the floor or wall.

Best wishes,
Tom Cordova

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 9:35 am and is filed under Answers to Marble Questions..., Installation Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.