A question I have had from Dave who I believe lives just outside Birmingham, is he wants to replace 1 or 2 tiles and doesn’t really think the job is big enough to get a professional tiler in. Is it easy to cut your own tiles?

Well Dave, the answer is yes! You need to buy some tools to do it and in fact in this case we’ve got a tile cutter here – very easy to use, cuts tiles up to 400mm. Tiles are very dangerous; they’re sharp, they’re ceramic. Always wear safety goggles in case a piece flies up. All you need to do, you would have marked the tile where you want to cut it. Say you want it to fit in a corner, all you have to do is this tile cutter comes with a lever with tungsten carbide cutter blade here, is scribe, (that’s the name given by the trade for marking through the glaze, you always cut through the glazed side of the tile, never through the marked unglazed side).

All you do is, where you’ve marked where your line is, and I’ve got an imaginary line here – you push forward, and you can hear, it’s a bit like a teacher going down the blackboard with her nails to get your attention. You mark through and you should normally only scribe once to fracture through the glaze. You then apply the tool down with this block at the back of the tile. Press down, and job done. Tile’s been cut in a line there.

You could replace it and do another one here. Lovely noise through the glaze. Cutting tiles is as complicated as that.

If you have any other questions, head over to amtech.diy.com and you can ask us anything else about your tiling questions.