I'm truly floored

Finished the hallway ground floor tiling. Talk about fiddly ! Luckily the kitchen and bathrooms are smaller. 

How I did it ; 

1/ Make a Template to scale and do a better job than I did. Make sure its symetrical. 

2/ Cut out 100's of tiles from thick kraft card ( 350 g ) do this in front of the telly or fire. Cut them one at a time. Be patient. I used about 350 octagons and  about 150 10x10 mm squares. 

3/ Stick the tiles onto masking tape tacky side up on a piece of stiff board, takes ages.

4/ Cover the tile pieces in poly filler with a knife. When dry sand them lighty, leave the marks.

5/ Paint them with a base coat of random offy whity paint, preferably mat.

6/ Paint them all with a mix of Yellow Ochre, Burnt umber, White and Black. Use a dryish brush trying to vary the tones over the board from whitish beige to darkish brown with all the tones in between.

7/ Try to take the tiles off the tape without either ripping off the backing or going mad. Do this when you are in a calm mood. Have some tea afterwards. Maybe cake. 

8/ Clean up the edges of the tiles carefully. Put in a box and shake it up like Bingo.

9/ I used wood glue to stick them to the base wood after drawing on a grid to check the alignment as I went.  Leave a scaled joint, not too big, not too small but leave space for grouting. The glue on the reverse side of the paint tends to curb and raise the tiles as you go so you have to weigh down the tiles you have glued as you go. Use a flat piece of wood and something heavy.

10/ When dry varnish the whole thing, I used mat acrylic colorless varnish.

11/ When dry, drag thickish Polly filler or something similar over the joints with your finger, dont use anything sharpish like a knife so as not to damage the surfaces. Clean off excess with a damp paper towel then buff up with a clean rag. Be gentle.

12/ When dry, slop very washy burnt umber or brownish paint over the joints to dull down the white grouting. Rub off excess gently with a rag. You can dirty the grout before you use it also.

13/ When dry varnish again with the same varnish. 

14/ When dry rub over gently with fine grade wire wool to remove any brush strokes in the varnish.

15/ Finally wax up with a tinted 'Antique' wax and buff and buff gently. 

16/ Voila !!  Have some more tea, a lot of tea. Maybe a lot of cake too. 

 Above you can see the space for the staircase to sit. The overall colour I found too orange in the beginning but now I like it. I edged the front, the door openings and around the stair base with the 10x10 mm tiles, VERY fiddly. I added a lozange shape in the same tiles to make a discrete statement. The hallway needs the blue grey colour I intend to use to complement the orange tone. 

 A slightly closer image of the finished tiles. 

 There was a point where the tiles began to go squiff because of some rogue shapes so to fill this odd space I made a patchwork of bits as you would in a real scale floor. These tiles are often cracked or broken and left as it. This usually happens when the tiles are laid over a wood base and cracks appear when the wood shrinks. I opted not to put in too many of these cracked tiles as it was already fiddly enough. 

This 'how to '  can be adapted to any sort of tile or stone. For bathroom wall tiles you can use thick glaze over the painted tile shapes.