the tile, the more obvious it is. Someone may have a hard time seeing a 3/8” taper in a 24”x 24”, but it’s an entirely different story over the same distance with a 5/8” mosaic. If you’re going to be tiling a shower to the ceiling, you need to know if the ceiling is 3/4” out of level across the back wall. On floors, I snap a reference line off my longest or most visual run and find square from that by using “3-4- 5” also known – to the more aca- demic among us – as Pythagorean theorem. To be honest, these days I just use a laser square; it speeds up the whole process. On walls it’s the same; find center, then plumb and level with either a spirit/bubble level or a laser. Creating a story pole; envisioning the space Next is creating a story pole. I’ll lay my tile on the floor with the appropriate joint spacing, and do one of three things: • Write the full tile measurements down, or • Measure off of the tiles on the ground, or • With mosaics, make a true story pole marking a piece of lumber at each joint. Once I have all this information it’s envisioning the space and TECHNICAL FEATURE ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Willoughby creates a story pole to get the proper spac- ing and uses that to envision the installation of tile in the space. 86 TileLetter | March 2018