Kitchen floor - restore or re-tile?

[Mandy21]

Quick question

We are in the process of renovating the kitchen - moved in about 6 months ago and in 2 years time, we're planning a big kitchen extension so this is a kind of make-do transformation. The kitchen is oak which we've painted in Farrow & Ball French Gray and the walls are Wimborne White (a very pale cream). The room itself isn't huge, its about 14ft by 9ft and there are two quite big windows (so its relatively light).

We have pulled up the lino as we knew there were terracotta / quarry tiles laid underneath. The trouble is that the kitchen had been extended slightly and there is a slight difference between the tiles in the extension part (the last 2ft or so) and the existing kitchen - they're all terracotta / quarry tiles but there is a slight colour variation and they've been laid differently (like bricks in one part, just side by side in the other part). Also, they are covered in absolutely solid glue / dirt / gloop which is going to take weeks (literally) to remove. Having said all that, the tiny patch that we've already restored (it took us about 2 hours to do 6 15cm x 15cm tiles) looks absolutely lovely.

So, question is really - what would you do in terms of flooring? Would you go to the lengths of trying to restore the existing floor (knowing that the slight variation between the kitchen and the extension part would be obvious) or would you re-tile it? Unfortunately, we couldn't stretch to a decent floor, so it would be budget ceramic tiles although wouldn't know what colour to go for.

Any comments?

Thanks

Restore - there are specialist solutions for restoring quarry tiles and removing glue which means that it probably won't take you as long to do the rest.

We have the same problem.The quarry tiles are also very cold.We are building a kitchen extension and decided to refloor with underfloor heating in the new bit and very thin electrical underfloor on top of the old tiles.I bought travertine tiles before christmas in the sales [ 57 sq. metres for just over 1000 pounds].You can restore them -but it seems to be fairly expensive ['though part of the charm of old quarry tiles is the fact they are often mismatched].I do love original features and if we weren't doing an extension i would have kept them - so i guess its personal preference.

Thanks for your replies - had another search on the internet and found a solution which helps to remove mortar / cement - not sure its intended for as much as is on these tiles, but we'll give it a go.

Thanks

Mandy