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Wed, Jul 4, 12 at 20:46
| So I wanted to write this review as when I went to use this product I couldn't find many reviews online. We bought this at Home Depot when we decided to tile above our fiberglass shower unit. This is the double sided sticky "mat" you can use to lay tile. We're also planning on tiling our ktchen backsplash so we figured this was a good trial for the product.
AFter deciding on our tile layout we started to put up the simplemat. It took me a little while to understand when they say to overlap about 1/4" and how we could then peel the front side off but it worked fine. So we just cut the mat to size and stuck it up on the wall.Pretty simple to do. When you're ready to start tiling you just peel the fornt plastic off and it exposes the sticky "nubs". SO away we went. We did decide on a layout that didn't have too many cuts, as to avoid the tile saw. Tiles need to be completely dry to stick to the mat so avoiding the tile saw was a good thing. We just used a tile scorer to make the cuts. Things went fine for a while. We did have one difficult cut around the shower head that took us about 10 tiles to get right (the kept breaking on us), but it was fine. We also used a mosaic decorative tile on mesh. The rest of the tiles were the standard 4 1/4" tiles. Once we got the basic cuts down putting the tiles up went pretty fast. Definitely easier and less messy then thinset, especislly for a location above my head. We did need to reposition a few tiles and it was hard to pull them off the mat, but we were able to get them off. We left the tiles up overnight and planned to grout the next evening. I went to check the tiles that 2nd night before grouting and some of the mosaic mesh tiles had fallen off the wall. A couple chipped but luckily we had some extra. We decided just to use liquid nails to fix the few that fell off. After that we grouted and then sealed the grout the next night and it looks great.NOthing fell off after the grouting. Based on our experience I would not use this for mesh backed tiles, but it was fine on our 4 1/4" tiles. We hope to do the same project in another bathroom but using just regular tiles. Below are some pictures..hope this helps anyone thinking about the product. Putting up the mat: 
you can kind of see the glue "nubs" 
starting the tile: 
finished tiling: 
grouted, sealed and caulked: 
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Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by williamsem (My Page) on Wed, Jul 4, 12 at 21:30
| Wow, that sounds like a fantastic way to tile! If any issues come up, please update as needed if you think of it. I'm interested to hear what the tile experts have to say... |
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| Looks good! Question, is there any way to move/nudge tiles after you have layed them? Or is that it? Thinset gives you flexibility until it sets, but does this stuff? |
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| Reviews are mixed on this stuff. Never seen it attempted in a shower...usually backsplashes. Some tile seems to stay on....some just fall off regularly. In a wet/humid environment, I vote to save your money. A $12 bag of Versabond goes a loooong way, and it WILL stay up there. Also, you can "adjust" the tile...not so easy with the Peel & Stick stuff. The grout will probably keep it from coming loose. I'd be interested in an update in a year or so. |
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| Yeah, we weren't sure about this spot, but it did say bathroom wall tile on the package. We figured too that this area doesn't get hit directly very much with water...just what splashes off us I guess. Thinset does give you more flexability. I wouldn't say you can really "nudge" tiles after they're on, you need to take them off completely and reposition them directly. Because of the location being higher than I Can reach comfortably without a stoool and the potential mess thinset could make we figured this was a good place to try them. If I can remember in a year, I'd gladly give an update. I think we're going to switch back to thinset for our kitchen backsplash though as we plan on using glass tiles on mesh and don't want to risk those falling off like the ones here did. Just figured I'd give people my experience with it as I was searching for a review too. |
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- Posted by EngineerChic (My Page) on Thu, Jul 5, 12 at 15:06
| Wow, that looks really good! If I tackle my kitchen backsplash I might use that. It could make life easier. Thanks for posting this, I hadn't even heard of the product before reading this. |
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- Posted by EngineerChic (My Page) on Thu, Jul 5, 12 at 15:06
| Wow, that looks really good! If I tackle my kitchen backsplash I might use that. It could make life easier. Thanks for posting this, I hadn't even heard of the product before reading this. |
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| I could never understand why someone would pay three times the price for a material that is marginal, at best. Thinset is cheap and is rock solid.... |
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- Posted by barbcollins (My Page) on Fri, Jul 6, 12 at 7:53
| "Yeah, we weren't sure about this spot, but it did say bathroom wall tile on the package." So does a tub of mastic, but we know that's not true. Thank's for the review. I wouldn't be able to use the SimpleMat because I NEED that "nudge" factor. Whenever I do get a tile up and it's level for the first time I am surprised :) |
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| We haven't used it yet but we were told that you needed to grout it right away so the glue doesn't dry out and stays sticky. |
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| I used Bondura, a similar product for two bathroom back splashes, both are glass and stone tile on a mesh. I grouted right away in both cases. It worked great for that application. I finished each back splash in about an hour. |
This post was edited by gmp3 on Mon, Jan 21, 13 at 21:14
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- Posted by hosenemesis (My Page) on Tue, Jan 22, 13 at 0:04
| Beautiful tile, gmp3. Really unique, and it looks so sophisticated with your counter top. |
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| I agree! Really UNIQUE backsplash tile gmp3! |
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