Day two of P-ITT's floor tiling course and I must admit I had to think long and hard on the problems of fully disclosing the contents of today lessons; why? Well I know for a fact that todays multi-room and multi-corridor layout is not taught anywhere else and if it is, please let me know and to what degree. And I really didn't want someone to come along and just copy P-ITT's ideas.

But it wasn't until I watched my fellow course students feverishly working away following Jason's instructions and guidance and genuinely enjoying the tasks at hand, that I thought "It's all in the teaching method". You could have the best course content in the world but if you can't convey the information in a way that everyone understands then what's the point. Put it this way, I've spent years and years doing floors differently and within minutes they'd convinced my brain that there is an easier and more flexible way to work with floor tiling and I'm prepared to take those new lessons away with me and put them into practice.

During the course of today we have set out seven rooms and three corridors with tiles continuing from the corridor focal points through doorways (no door strips) into the rooms, around stairs and other floor obstacles.

Not only did this layout include a standard square layout, but also a diamond border design in the corridors. As a group we also had to determine the best layout that provide the least poorly sized cuts. Each pair had to accurately measure and report all their cuts sizes, the amount of rake cuts for square and brickbond layouts. And if you remember from the first post, not all the walls were square. So this process had to be done more than once and I'm glad the group had to go through the process more than once, because nothing in the real world is perfectly square, so you need to know what to do when things don't work out quite right.

As you can imagine with this many layouts in so many rooms with different tile patterns this took quite a few hours, just enough time to let the knowledge seep in and settle.

After lunch we then went through a seated lesson on ceramic tile and natural stone make-up. Which materials fell into which category, how they are made, their strengths and weaknesses and what problems may occur when fixing. The group then had the chance to inspect many different tile materials such as porcelain, travertine, quartzite, basalt, terracotta, granite and marble plus many more.

Jason then took the class through detailed information on adhesive and grout requirements when working with natural stone materials plus how why and when they need sealing. There were also demonstrations on what happens to tiles which aren't sealed correctly and the different types of sealer and their uses.

I have to say that day two for me was even better than day one, if for nothing else simply the multi-room layout. But saying that, the natural stone lesson was very informative and contained dare I say it 'essential information' for anyone working with stone. Again there were subtle differences with my current practices, but I'm truly glad because I've learnt new ways to make what for me is a really rewarding job, even easier and more versatile.

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Day one | Day two | Day three | Day four | Day five | Conclusion

Each day of the course will be reviewed so please continue to read, for more details of the floor tiling course click here

Review by Dave M. Carr
[e] dave@davemcarr.co.uk
[w] www.tiling.davemcarr.co.uk
Professional Floor Wall Tiler Nottingham

Tags: reviews, training courses, pitt, floor tiling