With yet another long weekend this week, there’s no better time to think about tackling a big DIY job, such as laying a ceramic tile floor.

The first thing, as with any DIY task, is preparation, often considered 80 per cent of the job.

Assuming your ceramic floor is for your kitchen or bathroom, you need to think about the order of work.

If you’re starting from scratch and gutting the room, it’s easier to lay the floor before the new kitchen or bathroom suite is fitted (remember to adjust the height of the electrical points, etc).

This means you don’t have to work round awkward objects like pipes (leaving appropriate holes, of course).

In the kitchen, you will save money if you only tile the floor area remaining after the units have been fitted, but this can cause problems with appliances. Why? Because the level of the floor on which your dishwasher, washing machine or integrated fridge-freezer are standing will be lower than the tiled floor.If the appliances are slotted under a worktop, you’ll have difficulty getting them out for repairs because the floor levels are different.

Now for the sub-floor, which is crucial. The best surfaces are concrete, a fresh or cured mortar bed, or cement/backer board. If you have floorboards, you’ll need to screw them in place – nailing isn’t enough – being careful not to screw through pipes and cables (use a cable/pipe detector). Also, repair any damaged boards. You then need to affix plywood (around 20mm thick) or cement board on top.

Most manufacturers recommend the latter because it’s often waterproof and is less likely to flex and so cause cracks in your tiling. You should be able to buy cement board in the same place as your tiles and grout.

Whatever the sub-floor, it must be flat, level and very clean, as even small particles can cause cracks. If it’s not level, you’ll need to build up the adhesive to make some of the tiles level with the rest, which is tricky.

The size of tiles you use will also determine how easy the job is. The bigger the tiles, the less you have to lay, but the general rule is that small tiles suit a small room and large tiles, a large room. However, this is not always the case, so don’t be afraid to play around with proportions.

If you have an existing bathroom suite to tile around, the easiest tiles to use are mosaic ones, particularly random mosaics (rather than square ones) because cutting curved tiles to go round things like the loo is hard.

The beauty of these mosaics is that you can pull individual stones off the underlying mesh to fill small spaces, or cut off parts of the mesh to fit round awkward objects, so minimal cutting is required.

A good tip is to use a combined adhesive/grout, which isn’t usually recommended, but the adhesive will ooze through the gaps in the stones so you don’t want to grout with a different colour product. Ensure you buy tiles from the same batch and mix up the content of the boxes before you start so that any colour variations are distributed evenly.