I am putting 12x12 ceramic tiles on my kitchen wall.?

Dont be afraid to ask for help. Your local DIY store will be glad to answer questions for you, if they have enough help on the floor. All of the other responses are all good. I got a tile saw to cut the edges as needed and it was the best purchase I ever made for doing tile jobs. Maybe you can find someone who has one. It'll save lots of cutting time and beats the old hand cutting techs people have used for years! I just did my bathroom shower walls with large tile too, Good luck!!

Well, we just had to replace 12 x 12 ceramic tile from the bathrooms and kitchen floors of a house we bought 2 years ago, because they weren't installed properly! The grout wouldn't stay, and the tiles were popping up all over the place. The tiles had been installed directly over the subfloor instead of on backer board.

On a wall, you don't really need backer board. It your walls are drywall and in good shape, you can tile right over them. If you have loose paint, you need to scrape. If you have wallpaper, you'll need to remove it and the glue.

An organic mastic is a good choice for the adhesive for wall tile, because it starts to grip the tile before it's dry. But if the area is going to get VERY hot, or is likely to get wet, you should use something else.

Always be sure to have some extra tiles in case you ever need to replace a few. It's almost impossible to buy a new tile to match your existing one.

Obviously, you'll want to lay out nice straight guidelines. Snapping a chalk line or using a laswer guide are the bast ways to do that.

Have fun1

12x12 inches? That is big for a wall tile. 6x6 might look better. If your wall is not flat a larger tile will exaggerate the fact, because each tile is exactly flat.

You will have to cut the tiles at one end of each wall, possibly around fittings and perhaps at the top or the bottom of the walls.

You need to decide where the odd half-tiles will look best, or been seen less obviously.

Make sure that you have tile for walls is number one the second is be sure that you have the right kind of backing for the tile, like tile backer or durock also be sure that you use the right tile glue/motar and grout. Follow the manufacturers instructions for installing the tile.

divide the room in half and draw a line down the wall to keep the tiles straight- use an adhesive that is tacky so it will hold the tile in place and follow the directions go to home depot or lowes or another home improvement center and they will help you good luck

Before doing my tile work, I read through several posts at www.johnbridge.com - they are great! The advice there was invaluable and these guys are real professionals. So they don't have to go over the ABC's over Tiling 101, I would scroll through their FAQ's and other posts for the advice you are looking for.

wall prep is the most important thing in wall tiling. Follow the manufactures direction on the glue/morter you are using for the best results

you can go over to home depot or lowes and they have books for diyers specifically for whatever task is at hand ....i would invest the $20 in the little jewel so that if i had to troubleshoot anything i could....nothing worse than doing something like tile only to find out you did something wrong.....tile aint cheap!

make sure you know what your doing