How to Install Mosaic Tiles

Video Transcript

"For this project we're going to use mastic. There's two ways to apply mastic to your tile and the wood. The first way is called buttering. What you do is, you take a thin but consistent layer of mastic, about an eighth of an inch, and cover the whole back of the tile, position it, and then press down. You'll see mastic coming out all the sides, that's OK, that's later going to be covered by your grout, so don't worry about it. Again, you take it, you butter the whole back, not too much, not too little, you'll learn by the feel pretty quickly how much that is, you position it, and then press down firmly. If it comes down over the edge of your substrate like mine did, you can just wipe it away. Another technique you can use, especially if you have a lot of smaller pieces, is to butter the board itself. Once you have about an eighth on an inch buttered section, not too big, you can start placing individual pieces down, pressing down hard just like you did before. This way you can put down a lot of little pieces without having to individually butter them all. Try to keep mastic off the top of your tile as well. If you see a little bit, you can just wipe it off while it's still wet. If it dries on there, you can scrape it off afterwards, but it's much harder. Remember to push down firmly with each piece, keeping in mind positioning, how far apart they are from each other, and what colors are next to each other. The mastic takes about a half an hour to an hour to dry fully. So you have plenty of time to smush them around a little bit, or you can always pick it up, reapply some new mastic, and put it down. So if you see it coming up so much that it might cover your tiles, you can just push it back down with your finger or a popsicle stick."