How to fix chipped tile that looks like wood

Remember the beautiful new patio table that I bought last year? It has the look of a wood plank top but is actually tiled with wood look tile.
Over the winter, before we were able to add a table cover, we had a layer of ice on it. I had asked my husband and son to please not touch the ice. Guess what? They didn’t listen and attempted to scrape the ice off while I was out running errands. The result of that ice scraping was that we ended up with a large chip in that beautiful wood look tile. I was so devastated because I love this table.

So in today’s post, I want to show you how to fix chipped tile and made it blend back into the rest of the table.

How to fix chipped tile that looks like wood

Before I started with this project, I watched a couple of YouTube videos to see how other folks attempted to fix their chipped tiles. Our tile was certainly different since it looks like wood.

I quickly decided that I wasn’t going to attempt to make the chip blend in with the rest of the table color. Instead, I rather wanted to make it stand out like a wood knot or wood imperfection.
When others attempted to fix their tiles they started out with the lightest color and then stacked darker colors on top to make it all blend in with the rest of the tile.

Instructions on how to fix chipped wood-look tile

Below you can see a close-up of the size of the main part of the crack. It was pretty deep too. There was also a fine hairline crack leading further along the table.

1. The TileFix comes with a handy mixing chart so you can determine which color you want to go with and how to mix it.
2. I mixed my color and hardener in an old Chinese food container because the one that came with the kit was too small for my large crack
3. I loosely spread the mixture into the crack with the provided wooden stick.
4. Then used one of the larger plastic spreaders that I purchased to evenly spread the mixture into the crack.
5. A dampened paper towel helped me to wipe off excess filler around the tile crack.
6. When everything dried, I used fine-grit sandpaper to lightly sand the filled crack. This is when I noticed that I had to repeat filling the crack two more times because it didn’t fill evenly. I also decided to use a slightly lighter color, followed by darker as you can see in the video.
7. The next coats of filler didn’t dry before I used a fine artist brush to paint in the black wooden veins. I figured it was easier to add the color that way but am not sure if that is actually true.
8. Lastly, when everything was dried completely, I added drops of the provided sealer and used another wider artist brush to smooth out the sealer evenly.

And voila, below you can see the result. It is still visible and definitely not perfect. I think my strategy of making it look like an imperfection in the wood was the right choice though. Don’t you think so?