DIY Peel-And-Stick Tile Floor Entry

This is one of those projects that I’m so glad I can finally call “done!” I’ve had the supplies sitting waiting in a closet since the first month we moved into our new house a year and a half ago, so to finally be looking at the finished results feels really good. I can’t really explain the delay other than to say that work has been busy and other home projects have just taken precedence. But this week I challenged myself to get it done, and today I’m sharing the whole story and tutorial. Keep scrolling for all the details behind my DIY Peel-And-Stick Tile Floor Entry!

Those photos above show how the tiled threshold to our back door looked before. The tile was fine and in great shape, to be honest, but it just lacked character. I liked the neutral color palette, though, so when I went to source a new tile option, I definitely took inspiration from the existing colors—cream, white, and beige. As for my plan for the material itself, I wanted to try my hand yet again with peel-and-stick tile. You may remember that we used this same brand of tile in multiple places at our last house and loved it, so I knew I wanted to try using it again in our new house. The peel-and-stick variety allows you to skip the hassle of chipping away at hard tile to remove it, peel-and-stick tile is much more cost-effective, and the project takes very little time I’ve found.

The first step, of course, was to deep clean the tile. I gave it a thorough vacuum first, and then I wiped it down with an all-purpose surface cleaner. After the cleaner had dried completely, I grabbed the boxes of tile that, as I said, had been sitting in a closet for the better part of a year, just waiting for their moment to shine. I chose this design from Amazon because the neutral colors suited my vision, and because I loved the slightly boho vibe of the pattern. It felt like the old tile, but just more modern and more “us.”

Next, I unboxed the tile and laid everything out to see what we were working with in terms of cuts. Luckily, the first six tiles were able to go down without any cuts at all. I just peeled back the paper on the back of the tile, and then pressed the tile in place right over the old tile. I pressed firmly all the way around, and then grabbed my next tile—so on and so forth. I started in the middle and worked my way out and back from there. Those first six tiles took maybe five minutes to put down, and then I moved on to the process of cutting the border tiles to fit our existing tile threshold.

To do the cuts, I pushed the tile (with its backer paper still on!) right up against the finished tile exactly where it would lay when pressed in place later on. Then, I made two marks on either end of the tile with a fine tip black marker to denote where the cut should start/end, and connected those two marks with my marker and straight edge measuring stick. Next, I moved the marked tile over to my cutting mat, sliced firmly along the line I drew with a fresh razor blade, and snapped the tile to cut it clean through. There’s no need to slice all the way through the tile with your razor blade. Scoring and snapping it is a much cleaner, less physically taxing method. It worked perfectly every time.

For those extra tricky spots up against the decorative door trim moulding, I used this contour gauge. Just unlock the tool, push all of the orange “arms” down until they’re even along the edge, and then gently press it into your contoured trim. This will give you an exact replica of the trim profile that you can then trace onto your tile. I used heavy duty shears to cut my curved design out of the tile. Highly recommend that gauge! Finally, I stacked as much heavy things on top of the tile as I could find to help weigh the tile down. This allowed the adhesive to stick really well to the tile beneath.

I stood back after removing all of the weights the next day, and was genuinely so impressed with the finished results. It looks very similar to the old tile in terms of color, but the style is so much more elevated now. It looks sort of like a cute rug to me, but is much more heavy duty, which is key since this is a high traffic area. I’ll be sure to update this post if anything pops up (literally) after we walk over the tile for the next few weeks and months, but, overall, I’m really happy with how this project turned out, and I’m glad that I finally challenged myself to cross it off my list once and for all.

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