Removing tile floor

[smorris]

LOML wants a new kitchen and I'm OK with that, expand it a few feet, drop a non-load wall and put in an island and new cabinets. Not easy but not gut wrenching. The she dropped the bomb, she also wants new flooring.

We have porcelain tile on the concrete slab, she wants hardwood and is not amenable to a floating floor, she doesn't like the look. So it would require pulling out ~ 800 sq ft of tile and removing the thinset down to a smooth slab. Breaking up the tile is a job in itself but doable and if it was just the kitchen I could chip out the mortar but wouldn't relish the job. Anyone have any ideas on how one would level a large area back down to the slab? I pulled a few tiles for a repair a few years ago and they did use very good mortar. I've asked at the rental places but all they have is 6" air powered chipping hammers, I figure I would grow old and die using that.
It may be that this is just too big a job and she'll have to accept a floating floor (seems that way to me).
Any thoughts are welcome except the woodchipper and plausible deniability ones, I'm kinda attached to her.

[Mr__Bill]

Putting aside the advisability of hardwood in a kitchen.....

Does it really matter if the floor is 3/4" higher? The tile is at least sort of level and I bet the slab under it is not. Personally I would opt to leave it and somehow put the hardwood on top.

On one of those home shows they had an air tool that looked like and ice chipper/scraper and they just pushed it and let the air do the work. Can't remember if it was one where the lady of the house gets to use the tools or not, so I have no idea of how much of a job it would be. You can find out though, just get a few estimates and the cost will tell you a lot about how hard it is to do or if you want to just let someone else do it for you.

Bill
on the Sunny Oregon Coast

[cabinetman]

I've had to do that before to retile, but luckily it was only a bathroom of about 30 sq ft. I didn't have the luxury of a 6" wide air scraper, but I did use my air chisel/hammer, with a chisel bit. It did work but was still a PITA. If the concrete was very clean and damp when the thinset was applied, it's likely it's stuck down pretty good. If the concrete was a bit dusty, or the thinset was too sandy, it will break up a lot easier.

Personally, I wouldn't use a wood floor in a kitchen, but as mentioned, it can be done with sleepers.
.

[Uncle Cracker]

Get an air scraper (HF#37073 is on sale now online for $99 - stores will match the price if you take a copy of web-page) to take up the tile... Then rent a flooring grinder if you want a nicely finished surface. Smoother than a baby's butt, without a lot of backbreaking work.

[smorris]

I think I can convince her to go with some sort of tile in the kitchen, considering spills, drops, etc the wood just wouldn't hold up there as well as it could.

I'll look into the HF scraper. I saw some footage on a website about a large grinder/leveler if the thinset doesn't want to come up easily. And I noticed that there is a concrete cutting, coring company locally. Maybe I could just pay them to remove the thinset. God awful messy. I'll spend some time running her around to some flooring places over the next few weeks and have her look at some of the floating floors again I could lay over the tile.

At any rate I have some time because no way am I doing this over the summer in the Tampa heat and humidity.

[JimD]

I have hardwood in my kitchen right now. It has been re-finished once and needs it again. It was finished in place with polyurethane. Initially by a "professional" and more recently by me. My house is 11 years old. I would not do wood again at least not finished in place wood. Maybe a factory finish would hold up better. If you do it, put rugs at places like the sink where someone will work for long periods.

Simplest was to do this would be to put down a subfloor of 3/4 plywood over the tile and nail the wood to that.

Best would be to do tile again. It is hugely more durable.

Jim

[Uncle Cracker]

Maybe not real wood, but one of the composite fakes??? I've seen some that you could not tell from the real thing without a magnifying glass...

[smorris]

I'd considered 3/4 ply over the tile and nailing to it, but how do you glue the plywood down to the tile? I could screw it to the pad with tapcons but I don't think that is going to work over the tile. Without screwing it down, how does it stay flat? Sleepers over the tile, as Cman mentioned, might be an idea, but what kind of glue will stick to the tile well enough to hold the sleepers in place?

[Mr__Bill]

I was in a house a while back that had tile from Italy that looked like wood. That may be a solution. It was a porcelain tile with some grain texture and a nice color. As it remember it, it was about 6" wide and 18" long and was laid like planks.

edit: I did a quick search and it looked like this.

Bill
nothing is too expensive to suggest someone else to use....


oh, did I mention, it was a tad bit pricey.

[conwaygolfer]

You can use thinset to hold the plywood to the floor. When we install tile over plywood - we first thin set durock to the plywood, then install the tile over the durock. So just use thinset to hold the plywood to the floor. You want to be sure to use CDX (the old roofing plywood) plywood. It has exterior glue which will not be affected by the water in the thinset. Do NOT use any other type plywood as it will come apart.

You could even thinset the CDX over the existing tile, but your floor will be much higher.
Good luck.

Conwaygolfer

[chopnhack]

As mentioned you can "build up" but then you have to address your threshold issues....it may seem like more work but tearing it up is the easier way to go in the long run. I have torn up thousands of square feet using nothing more than an electric hammer drill set to hammer only mode with a 1.5" wide chisel tip (which by the way is considered the wide tip from the manufacturer!). If you can break you the first row, the others should go real easy, meaning, the tile usually can be coaxed to separate from the thinset as a whole piece. Some of the cheaper ceramics will break as they dont have the same tensile strength as the porcelain tiles. That, a good flat shovel and a wheelbarrow and you can be done in a couple of hours. The leveling as others have already mentioned, I believe the local home depot has for rent a diamond cup grinder for concrete. You will want to wet the floor down prior to use because of all the dust...how will you control the dust from the machine? Also, its better to chip away more than less, low spots will get filled, high spots will have to be floated out. I have hardwood floors, real wood on a plywood substrate, floating over a slab and no problems at all. Makes is easier as I mentioned with transitions. Just make sure you spend a lot of time on the floor prep, when they say it has to be no more than 1/16 in 8', you best believe it! Builders paper, 15lb felt and even 30lb felt maybe useful as shims, the reason you may need this if you choose to float is because naturally some of the real wood planks will be cupped to some degree and yes when you interlock them they will flatten some, but you may need to shim under the cup to make it "sound" even if you make it "NASA" flat :P If I wasnt up to my elbows in work I would drive over and help you!

[BigguyZ]

I would definitely advise that you do the work and remove the old floor. I've never seen good things by building up layers or flooring.

However, I would echo the suggestions to stay with tile. Wood doesn't play nice with wet areas. If you DO go with wood, I would say at least do NOT go with a pre-finished floor. No matter how tight you lay the floor, there are gaps between the boards that are not protected by a finish. AS a result, moisture gets in between the boards and it WILL damage the floor quickly. Pre-finished is fince for areas that won't get this abuse- like bedrooms ro living rooms- but I would not use it for a wet area like an entrance, kitchen, or bathroom.

[pelligrini]

Like others have said, real wood floors in wet areas are usually not a good idea. BigguyZ's comment about prefinished is valid too. We did some prefinished wood floors throughout some high end condos a short while back. It certainly does look good, but they have been very problematic. Especially so, since the appliance installer did a very poor job. Leaking freezers, ice makers, dishwashers have caused many of the floors to be replaced or refinished, more than once. The floor in the model unit got messed up a little just from the condensation off a wine bucket.

If you do decide to put down a wood floor, be sure to lay down a vapor barrier or test the area for water vapor.

[DrChas]

Been there, done that. We had a kitchen with a slate floor (UGLY!). The SOBs had put it down, not with thinset, but with construction adhesive. The only answer was to attack it with a chipping hammer. HOWEVER, had it been thinset they had tile removers that work pretty well.

What I did was put in 3/4" sleepers on the slab, I filled the gap between sleepers with blue styrofoam insulation, and filled the gaps with foaming goo. Next went down a plastic sheet, and finally 3/4 inch tongue and groove plywood. I then put a nail down floor on with no problems. I secured the sleepers with tapcons which helped keep them dead flat.

The people who know recommended using 2X4 sleepers (for the extra insulation), but I didn't want to raise the floor that much. The insulation that I did add between the slab and the floor made a huge difference.

Sorry, that was a long time ago, so no pictures.