Start with the room, not the tile
Measure the finished room, not the drawing. Note the true wall lengths, where the doors swing, where furniture will sit and which direction people walk in from. A format that leaves a generous field of full tiles with modest cuts at two edges will always look better than a larger format that leaves slivers along a wall. In older houses around St George’s and Gouyave, walls are rarely square, and the setting out has to absorb that quietly rather than announce it in a line of tapering cuts. Photograph the room and mark the sight lines from the door, because the eye reads the far corner first and a cut tile there will always be the first thing a visitor sees.
Formats that suit island rooms
Four size families cover most interior work in Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique:
- Large rectangles, calm in open living space and quick to lay, but demanding of a flat slab.
- Square formats around the middle of the range, forgiving in rooms with awkward walls.
- Smaller squares and rectangles, right for bathrooms, stairs and anywhere falls are needed.
- Mixed pattern sets, where several sizes repeat to break up a long floor without looking random.
Thickness follows use: interior floors take a thinner tile than a driveway or terrace ever would. Ask what tolerance the calibration holds to, since that number decides how tight your joints can reasonably be.
The slab below your floor
Imported stone is a wearing surface. Everything that carries it is made here. Grenada quarries its own basalt at Telescope in St Andrew through the state-owned Gravel, Concrete and Emulsion Corporation, and that rock is a high-quality feedstock for concrete and road surfacing, which means the slab and screed beneath your floor are very likely Grenadian aggregate. A calibrated tile is a different product class sitting on top of that base. If the slab is not flat, no format will rescue it, so check the substrate before choosing between sizes we stock for interiors. Run a long straightedge in several directions and note the low spots before anything is ordered. A slab out by a fraction of an inch over a long run is normal; a dip under a doorway is a job for the screed, not for extra adhesive.
Setting out and the first line
The first line decides the whole floor. Tilers who do this well spend an hour with a chalk line and a dry run before mixing anything:
- Center the field on the view a person sees from the main entrance.
- Keep full tiles at the doorway and push cuts to the wall that furniture will cover.
- Run the long dimension of a rectangle along the length of the room to stretch it.
- Dry-lay one full row across the widest span to confirm the cut sizes at both ends.
Pattern is part of setting out rather than a separate decision, and the same thinking behind layout choices for tiled floors applies to paving patterns outdoors, at a larger scale. Straight courses read calm; anything diagonal costs more in cuts.
Joints, movement and honest tolerances
Natural stone is not a factory product with zero variation, and the joint is where that reality is absorbed. A slightly wider joint gives the tiler room to hold lines straight across a long floor and takes up the small differences between pieces. Grenada also sits in a seismically active part of the region, so movement joints at doorways, at changes of direction and around the edge of a large floor are simply good practice rather than an optional refinement. Ask your tiler to keep the joint consistent rather than minimal, and to run a dry line the full length of the floor before fixing so drift is caught early.
Thresholds between inside and gallery
The step from a living room to a covered gallery is the hardest joint in a tropical house, and it repays being drawn rather than improvised. Rain here arrives hard and driven in the wet months, so the door line is doing real work:
- Set the outside level below the inside level so driven rain runs away from the door.
- Keep the tone continuous and change only the finish as you cross the line.
- Use a single full-width piece at the threshold instead of two cuts meeting at the middle.
- Allow a joint at the door line where the two floors can move independently.
Heritage rooms in St George’s
St George’s has been a masonry town by law since municipal rules following the fires of the 1770s required building in brick or masonry, and the historic district has sat on Grenada’s UNESCO Tentative List since 2004, with a conservation zone under development. Work inside that fabric asks for restraint: modest formats, quiet joints and tones that sit alongside old plaster and stone rather than competing with them. Smaller pieces also cut better around the irregular openings common in older buildings. Ask early what consent the work needs, because heritage fabric rewards patience far more than speed.
Ordering quantities and delivery
Order the whole floor in one go from one production run, with a sensible allowance for cuts and future repairs:
- Add a margin above the measured area for cutting waste and breakage.
- Keep spare tiles from the same batch stored dry on site for later repairs.
- Confirm duty under the CARICOM tariff and VAT at fifteen percent with your broker.
- Allow the separate cargo-boat leg into Tyrrel Bay for anything going to Carriacou.
A floor that was set out on paper looks deliberate for as long as the house stands.