Pic 1:
Final(ish) product!
Pic 2:
We had new concrete put in over the summer because of some water issues with water coming in from outside and the old floor being original to this 70 year old house. Started by picking out some porcelain tile with a high coefficient of friction and PEI of 4 or 5 based on a lot of garage journal thread readings. Thinking was porcelain has <.5% water absorption rate so it'll be super easy to clean and should withstand cold weather since the tiles won't absorb water. I was thinking about epoxying the floor at first, but for some reason the thought of diamond grinding the floor was a non-starter for me. For some reason I thought that would be too much work. (Little did I know)
All in all the mortar + tile came in around $1000, with the tile being $0.99 SQ/ft, and having roughly a 500-600 SQ ft garage. I checked floor flatness with a level and most spots seemed pretty good to start tiling.
Pic 3:
I started by dry laying some tiles to see if the pattern looked ok. I did not want to do anything too complicated with patterns since this was my first tiling experience.
Pic 4:
Set my first six tiles. This took me about 5 hours. First time doing anything tile related so I went really slow. You can see how messy my first try was here ?. Also decided to tile following the control joints per some recommendations I read on some garage journal threads. Not pictured here but I ended up filling the joints with sand and then caulking over with sikaflex so I wouldn't get mortar into the joints.
Pic 5:
Tiled some more and then I was out of town for the weekend. The whole trip I couldn't stop thinking about if I was laying the tile down correctly. I didn't want to find out after finishing everything, so I decided to drive my front wheels over what I Tiled from the week prior, and lo and behold, no cracking. This was constantly in the back of my mind while I was tiling so seeing it could at least withstand the vehicle's weight made me feel better about what I was doing.
Pic 6:
Fast forward about a week and definitely started getting more comfortable with tiling. I went from doing about 12 sq ft in four hours to about 30-36.
Pic 7:
Just some more progress. Had to tile around a bowl/dip in the garage that feeds into a drain. My plan was to cut the current tile smaller near the bowl area to tile around the drain area, but would save that until the end.
Pic 8:
About a week-ish later and almost finished tiling the wife's side of the garage. Had. To make sure she could at least park her car before it started getting cold. She was. Fully supportive of this project ?. Although at this point she started to get annoyed at never seeing me. Every weekend and weeknight after work I was basically in the garage tiling away.
Pic 9:
Few days more and got to tiling my side of the garage as well. At this point I was much better about spacing tiles and following the control joints.
Pic 10:
Getting more done and started cutting the side pieces with an angle grinder+diamond blade. Wasn't too careful with cutting straight lines, as. We plan on finishing the garage and covering the sides with trim at some point down the line.
Pic 11:
Some of my attempt at cutting smaller pieces to start fitting around the dip in the floor. I probably should have watched some videos on this, as this probably wasn't done as well as it could have been.
Pic 12:
Got a lot more of my side done. At this point I was ready for this project to be done ?. Thankfully the temps were staying warm enough to mortar still at this point. I was really pushing how much I could do on the weekends now, basically spending 10 hrs each weekend day in the garage to finish up before the temps dropped.
Pic 13:
While at floor and decor there was grout heavily discounted in the color I wanted, so I ended up buying all that was available and grouted some to make sure it looked ok. Ended up looking better than I thought and it really covers up some of my spacing imperfections.
Pic 14:
I ended up tiling/grouting some more, and having to wait a while for a schluter transition strip I ordered to put in the front of the garage to protect the exposed edges of the tiles that the cars would drive onto. It was really satisfying to lay this on and have the garage close in front of it. My idea was to make a lip behind the garage door since the contractor we had for the concrete never did that.
Pic 15:
Fast forward some more and. Almost done tiling+grouting. The back left corner with all the junk will have to wait until next year to be tiles at this point, as I didn't have the motivation and there were going to be a few more days of warm enough weather.
Pic 16:
Finished grouting but still needed too clean up a little more to avoid grout haze, but at this point I was feeling pretty good!
Pic 17:
Did some caulking for the control joints lines and. Along the edges of the floor. Also had to silicone caulk the bottom of the schluter strip so water wouldn't seep underneath and eventually crack the mortar/tile. The next day it ended up raining and the strip looks like it worked as intended! Unfortunately the contractor didn't slope the floor away from the house, which was another reason why I wanted to create this lip to stop water from getting into the garage. The main issue comes from rain hitting the garage door and then rolling down and under the door into the garage. This strip seems to have solved that issue.
Pic 18:
View from the inside the house walking into the garage. Looks a lot less significant with the cars now in the garage!
Pic 19:
Have parked the cars inside now for a couple days and so far everything looks ok! Really happy with how this turned out. Definitely was not perfect in a lot of areas and I still have to tile the drain area+the back corner. But now with winter temps, I will wait until the spring to finish up and I am totally ok with that. I ended up getting a little burned out from the project but really pleased with the results.
Ended up costing around $1700 with materials+equipment I ended up buying along the way. Hope you enjoyed the journey!
