Weekend Warriors: Tearing Up Tile { Part One }

Last Weekend our dining room and kitchen where a dusty mess

We finally torn up the cracked, stained, Ugly tile up in the dining room and kitchen!

I was nervous in the weeks approaching 'Removal of the Tile' Why? Because, I did want to deal with a huge mess and what if this harder then it looks on TV? I decided to some research and find the easiest way to tear ceramic up tile.

Supplies Needed:

• Drop cloth
• Rubber Mallet
• Hammers
• Wood Shins
• Chisel Set
• Eye Glasses & Face Mask
• Heavy Broom, Dust Pan & Trash Can
• Heavy Duty Paint Scrapper
• Tile Scrapper
• Shop Vacuum (optional)

Tearing Up Tile Steps:
1. We emptied the entire dining room and kitchen out and place plastic over the vents in the ceiling and plastic of over the entrance to the kitchen/dining room to contain the dust.

2. We removed all the baseboards. Removing the baseboards to some patience, but it was worth it all the baseboards remained in tact! Which saves money. We placed a heavy duty paint scrapper on the top of the baseboard, then gently tapped it with a rubber mallet loosening up the baseboards. Next place wood shins into the baseboards - which helps loosen the nails. CAREFULLY remove the baseboard.

3. Determine what your tile is laying over. We have a raised foundation and I read its much harder to remove tile from a concrete foundation, it might even require renting a machine. How do you determine what your tile is covering? Place your drop cloth over a tile square, hit you hammer on the drop cloth, your tile should break in pieces. Gently remove your tile chucks. Under our tile we found linoleum. Which explains why our tile was cracked in many places. If you place tile over linoluem it can expand and contract and then crack

4. Carefully remove all the tile, we placed a drop cloth over the section of tile we planned on removing to avoid tile filing everywhere! Which it will. We hammer away with our chisel and where able to remove large sections of tile easy. Work smarter not harder. We would stop all sweep up all the debris and tile chunks along the way, less to cleanup

What We Learned:

• Gather all your supplies the night before, trips back and forth to Lowes  are not fun. We had one trip, MR CLH forgot to buy himself safety goggles
• Have fun! Remember it gets ugly before it gets pretty
• Work Smarter not Harder - take you time tearing up tile, less mess to clean up
• We also learmed removing tile was the easy part - the next step in the Demo process was mucher harder for us

DIY Easy?

I think this is easy (sometimes long and boring) DIY project - I'd recommend a two person team in a space larger then a bathroom. It took us two days from start to finish for both rooms, I think we would have completed the removal of the tile faster, if we started earlier. We didn't start until 11:30 on Sat - way to late to start a project.

Part Two - Removing the Thin Set & Why ony DIY Projects on TV get done in one day