Tools for Tomettes

Apart from a number of cheap black maçon's buckets and a rubber sponge, these are the tools we used for laying the tomettes.


The butch egg whisk arrangement is used for mixing the colle (glue) and grouting (we don't think there is a specific French word for grout, they appear to just use the word mortar). If you start the drill before you put the blender in your mix you can spray the gloop a long way. This is quite fun, but causes Certain Others to frown.

The angle grinder is how I cut the tiles for the diaper pattern. It has a diamond coated cutting disk which makes short work of terre cuite, but also creates bucketloads of very fine dust. Eye and ear protection is a good idea. If you are of a delicate disposition wearing a dust mask may also help.

The two tooth edged combs are used for spreading the colle. My experience is that the smaller comb is more useful - easier to use, because it doesnt have a handle which gets in the way. A handle may be good when you know what you're doing, but an ordinary comb is more intuituve. It is also 80% cheaper than the more complicated version.

I started off using the small spirit level on each tile as I laid them, but ended up doing it by eye (and feel). This was possible because the base we were putting the tomettes on was absolutely level.

The rubber squeegee is used for spreading the grout. You pour the grout out onto the tiles and then push it around until as much as possible has fallen into the joints. The more times you make a pass with your squeegee the less grout you waste when it comes to cleaning up.

I found that every part of the tiling process is designed to be painful. This is extra true if you're tall because cutting the tiles involves bending over in addition to all the time on your knees laying them.

Simon