How can I find out how many tiles I need to buy?
Measure and figure out the square footage of your kitchen floor.
It is sold by the s/f ,even if you buy a 8x8 tile for example. Some places will only sell in whole boxes.You ll need extra for cuts and waste anyway. When buying from the big box places ,look and make sure you get all the same dye lot and run number. If you buy from the mom and pop store, you ll get the same dye lot always. Should you need help figuring the area send me the measurements and tile size and I ll figure it for you. Go thru my avatar to get my e mail GL
Multiply the length by the width of the room, and that will give you the total square footage. If you are doing it in peel back tiles, it is 12 inch, and they are called vynal stick down tiles. (so if your square footage is 400 square feet, you will need 400 tiles) It would probably be best to stick with a 12 inch tile whether you use ceramic tile or stick down. You might also consider to do floating or laminate flooring, we are doing that in our kitchen next week. The guys at Lowes can help you calculate how much you need. Laminate flooring needs a padding, but it snaps together faster, and is less mess than grout. If you kitchen floor is in good condition, you can lay laminate over it. If your old flooring is lynoleum, you could lay the padding over it and then lay the laminate flooring over that. I think it is best to remove the old flooring though. If you are doing stick down tiles, you are going to have to do a wooden under layment. Probably 1/4 inch lugan (sp?) It is really smooth. Or 1/4 inch underlayment made for stick down tiles. I think it comes in 4x4 sheets. The only way you could skip the underlayment is if the lynoluem doesn't have a pattern, and is totally smooth, because if you lay tile over old flooring it is likely to pop up over time. So you have to glue and secure the underlayment every 6 inches, with something like liquid nails or ring shanked nails for underlayment. You know it might be better to tell me what kind of flooring you are going to use and then let me take it from there. The floating flooring is the easiest to do if you don't have a lot of experience in flooring. Can you repost your question and give me more details, so I can answer better.
