It was a way of marking walls and buildings, to warn of impending danger and protect the family from harm. In today’s modern world it is often used as a decorative covering, with the wall being made to look like the original floor tiles. Tiling can be fixed permanently or temporarily by the use of tiling nails, or removable tiling tape, that can be rolled up.
Temporary tiling can also be carried over a floor if removed and replaced at a later date. Tiling is the application of a surface of a solid surface, such as ceramic or stone to a flat or curved wall. Firstly recorded in 1400, tiling is from the Old English word tyle, -ing. See floor tile, – ing, floor tile and other similar floor tile examples. Floor tiles are made using a roller or brush, and tiling is applied using a trowel, pumice stone, or other solid surface.
The tiling nail is also called a trowel nail and is fixed to the wall securely above the tiled area. The key to tiling successfully is tiling in a straight line. It starts with one side of the tile straight, then the other, then both sides become straight again. The simplest type of tiling is the basic rectangle, square or octagonal, but the more intricate designs are achieved by using sloping, inclined planes to join the first two tiles. Inculable designs like trapezoids and spirals may require tilings of the underlying ground plane without gaps. Tile overlaps, where two adjacent tiles are overlapped horizontally, are another form of tiling.