I am about to start a ceramic tile flooring job in my bathroom and I have 
8mm radiator pipes coming up through the floor. What is the best way to deal 
with these to get the best result? Is it feasible to actually drill a 12mm 
diameter hole through the tiles and then drop them onto the floor to create 
the best finish or will I have to cut the tiles and fit them to the pipe? 
(The distance from the pipe to the wall is about 3").

The same is required of the walls. I have fitted a new shower mixer and want 
the best results around pipe work. The tiles are a small mosaic look on 
large tiles

kd wrote:

> I am about to start a ceramic tile flooring job in my bathroom and I
> have 8mm radiator pipes coming up through the floor. What is the best
> way to deal with these to get the best result? Is it feasible to
> actually drill a 12mm diameter hole through the tiles and then drop
> them onto the floor to create the best finish or will I have to cut
> the tiles and fit them to the pipe? (The distance from the pipe to
> the wall is about 3").
>
> The same is required of the walls. I have fitted a new shower mixer
> and want the best results around pipe work. The tiles are a small
> mosaic look on large tiles


Drill the tiles and drop over pipe but for a neat finish, hope you have a
good drill bit?
Trying to cut a floor tile to push into the pipe is very hard to do without
a machine tile cutter.
If the hole looks unsightly or larger than the pipe you can get shrouds to
fit over the pipe and cover the hole, bit like those chrome rings they have
for propping the kitchen worktops up.

I've tried a few different things, the last time with central heating 
pipes coming up from the floor to the towel heater I used a tile saw to 
saw out a strip the width of the pipe, round the area around the pipe 
with a file, and put the cut-out strip (nibbled/filed to fit) behind the 
pipe. It looked neat enough but the next time (if I can disconnect the 
pipes) I'll go back to drilling 3-4 holes with a small tile drill, not 
bother too much about the finish of the tile itself, and put a 
chrome/white/copper ring (made of plastic but still looking neat) around 
the pipe to finish it off neatly.