Hexagon Mosaic Floor Installation in a Westside Bathroom

This bathroom floor project in a Westside craftsman bungalow involved installing a white elongated hexagon mosaic tile over a wood subfloor that required reinforcement before tile could be set. The original 3/4-inch plywood subfloor had deflection exceeding L/360 when load-tested, so we sistered additional joists in the crawl space and installed a layer of 1/4-inch cement backer board over the existing plywood before any tile was laid. The mosaic comes on 12x12 mesh sheets, which allowed for reasonably fast setting once the substrate was prepared.

Elongated hexagon mosaics require attention to the sheet-to-sheet alignment: the elongated shape creates a directional pattern that must be consistent across every sheet join, or the floor reads as misaligned even when individual tiles are technically spaced correctly. We use a string line pulled through the center axis of the pattern across the entire floor before setting begins.