Of course I forgot to take before pictures but this bathroom was completely rebuilt. I naively thought large format 24x48 tiles would be a good choice for my first tile job because "there are only a few tiles to set".

Some reasons why I was wrong:

You can't rent a tile saw large enough for these tiles so I had to use a handheld tile saw (essentially a circular saw with a tile blade) and a straight edge.

They are too large to hold in place and mark, so each cut requires an accurate measurement or template, and when you screw one up the replacement cost is very high.

Getting the tile into place and doing the side to side movement to collapse the ridges is very physically demanding.

Once the ridges are collapsed it's almost impossible to break the suction and get the tile back off so it's really difficult to add/remove some thinset to address lippage.

The leveling clips do very little, they just aren't strong enough to move the tile against that large surface area of thinset. The pros use a vibrating tool to squeeze additional thinset out if they need to press the tile down a little more.

Despite the challenges I am extremely happy with how it turned out!