advice or tips on tiling on new slab

Hi everyone,

Just wondering whether any of you have attempted to do floor tiling yourselves. Our house is not far off from handover and we had in mind right from the start to tile the entire house ourselves after handover. We intend to use 450mm porcelain tiles. Would really appreciate any advice or tips on tiling. The one issue we feel we may have is the slab, it doesn't feel all that smooth and we can tell its uneven in some parts, we intend to ask the builder to sand most of these parts but still unsure as to how flat and smooth we will eventually get it. The other thing ive heard different opinions about is whether to seal the slab before laying the tiles on it or not.

I'am a painting contractor, i've worked with tilers fairly closely for close to 20 years, and i wouldnt do it myself i'd pay for them to do it. I know it sounds like you've made your decision but maybe the point i'am trying to make is if i have worked with them for twenty years and know abit about whats entailed in the job and i'd hire a tiler ????.
However the builder wont fix those dips/rises usually the tiler does (from what i understand)
Porcelain is hard to cut or you need diamond blades or something along those lines.
How you lay the job out (running straight lines throughout the home) is important, it will decide on the straightness of the job etc and what cuts you will have to make.

If you're assuming you just put glue down and lay a tile on it useing spacers and just run a straight line, you are wrong theres a fair bit more to it. Thats just the obvious easy stuff.

Oh, no, I suggest you don't do it yourselves.

A friend of mine tried to tile the front porch himself, he said even if he doesn't have a job, he wouldn't do it again.

As per what swarvy said^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
and....

If your slab absorbs water readily, there is no barrier to the tile adhesive, check all over .
Rough is good ... but lumps are bad .
The floor will have low and high sections... your builder won't help you much...
neither would he help a tiler...
He (tiler) might do a skim coat to fill the lows if it is bad.
Slide a 3 mtr straight edge across the floor and find the lows and highs.
Average the low/high and use a tile adhesive that suits the difference...3,4,5,6mm bed.
ie: if a tile was to be placed on a 'high' peak, the adhesive could be squashed to be level with the adjacent 'low' tile.
Pick your longest straightest run to begin, everything will come off that.
Work to a string line for the first run.
clean up as you go .
Just like a deck of cards really Tiles should be equidistant to frames, wastes, bathrooms
Put down all the full tiles and cut in later.
Onc
PS re read what swarvy said

Abbey_aj its pretty much as onc_artisan says.
I did it some years ago, laying 170m2 of ceramic tiles (not porcelain) and it came up near perfect. I'm about to do it again on my current home, once I get the retailer to either match the sample I chose, supply my second choice tile at the same price or collect the delivered tiles (many of which were broken) and give me a full refund, but I digress.

The most important thing is the setting out making sure your texta lines are dead-square using the 3,4,5 method. Rooms that are out of square take some figuring out just how to adjust lines etc. It requires lots of patience. Its not a project to rush into or guaranteed it WILL look like crap and you have to spend the rest of your life looking at it.

Dry-lay tiles with spacers to avoid (where possible) thin little strips to cut in doorways etc. Tile size will play a part here.
Some tile retailers have numerous laying hints on their websites.
Use a good quality (expensive) flexible adhesive
When laying open 4 or 5 boxes, taking from each in turn should there be a variation in colour.
I very much doubt if the builder will want to know anything about the unevenness of the concrete and IF its smooth it will require priming to assist adhesion.
Good luck.