Foam Dam for Self-Leveler
Sealing subfloor holes with big-gap expanding foam before a self-leveler pour, trimmed flush the next day.
Tape Over the Fine Line: Marking Shower-Base Cuts That Reassemble Perfectly
For the enveloped cuts on a sloped shower base, draw the finest line you can, lay delicate-surface tape along it, and slice the tape apart at each tile joint — the tape edge becomes a bold, unmissable guide for the blade.
cut line washes off the tile, marker rubs off on the wet saw, pencil won't mark porcelain, shower pan tile cuts
The Problem
A sloped shower base with envelope cuts — the diagonal cuts that let a flat tile fold around the slope to the drain — lives or dies on whether the cut pieces go back together in line. A marker line alone is easy to lose against glaze under a wet saw's water and glare, and a cut that wanders a blade's width at each intersection reads as a crooked drain from above.
The Technique
A tiler's marking system for precision base cuts:
- Mark with the finest liner you have. The thinner the line on the glaze, the more precise the layout — a fat marker line is itself a few blade-widths of ambiguity.
- Lay delicate-surface painter's tape along the line. Its crisp edge follows your fine line exactly and turns it into something you can actually see at the saw.
- Slice through the tape at each tile joint so every tile carries its own piece of the guide.
- Cut to the tape. The bold tape edge is now the guideline for your blade on every piece — stick to it, and the cut pieces line up through every intersection when they're set.
Pro tip: The tape is doing two jobs: visibility (a bold edge where a fine line would vanish under water and glare) and consistency (every piece cut to the same reference). One commenter's variant — center the blade *through* the tape instead of alongside it — also reduces chip-out on glazed edges; either way, the fine-line-first discipline is what makes it work.
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