Removing tiled floors

[TaupePanda]

Having almost gone completely insane trying to buy a house, we have decided to buy one 3 doors up from the one we are renting. Possibly not a 'forever home' but we like where we live, its super convenient for schools and there is a nice park nearby, which is useful because the 'garden' is hardly worthy of the word.

There are a couple of things that is putting me off, the main one being that the entire downstairs is tiled with these awful beige shiny tiles.

It's a new build so they have presumably always been there. My question is - has anyone ever taken up files from an entire level? My husband says it will be a difficult task and we should just buy rugs. But they are super cold and hard as well as being ugly as anything.

Will it really be a very tough job? My husband thinks we could damage skirtings and stuff, which would defeat the point of buying a ready-to-live-in new build house. Any tips or tricks?

Thanks

We just got wooden boards installed on top, otherwise it really is a massive and massively dirty job.

Since the tiles should be flat, you don't need any screeding just glue. Obviously you'll lose a couple of centimetres of height in the room but unless the ceilings are really low it's a small price to pay.

Quickstep laminate over the top, glued down, waterproof and warm

@TaupePanda As long as it’s not got underfloor heating, you can do what you want over the top. Carpets, vinyl, wood etc. Don’t take them up.

DS did it with a lot h of help from DH. DH used his professional drill? with an attachment that got under the tile and scraped the cement off the floor. There’s probably technical language for that!
The job was not for the faint hearted. It you lay a floor on top you’d have to raise the doors and skirting boards.

That's the problem with overlaying - raising the doors and skirtings will be a super challenging job too!

What about Rhino flooring posh vinyl basically

Ask your removers to put your stuff into storage for a week on moving day and go away or airbnb for a week. They'll "remove you" into one of those big metal crates that go on ships. Take it to warehouse storage and bring it back when you're ready.
When you take possession have the flooring folk ready to go in. Remove the skirtings, chisel up the tiles, lay flooring of choice, put back skirtings and painter gives everything a once over before the movers arrive with your stuff.

Or you can lift the tiles and deal with a huge amount of dust and crap, probably have to re-screed the floor which means the whole place has to be empty anyway while you live in it.

If you genuinely loathe them that's what I'd do, otherwise lots of warm rugs which you can lift in the summer for a cool mop clean /robohoover finish.

The skirting board can probably stay. Doors? Minor job in comparison to taking up tiles and making good the floor!

Thanks all. We actually live in an identical house 3 doors up (renting) and have checked the space under the skirtings and honestly, you can't get a sheet of paper under them. It different flooring here - wooden boards - but I imagine it was all built very similarly so not likely some space has been left to install even the most basic of vinyl.
Another neighbour has painted the tiles and used rugs and it looks OK - we might down that path, for a low effort option.

Skirting boards are cheap though. You won’t get anything underneath them but you can fairly easily replace them. Carpets just butt up to them. The cost of levelling a messed up floor will be more than skirting boards.

I've got tiles I no longer like, the edges are not straight more rustic, has anyone had the grout levelled so that lino could go on top?

What I would do is lay the new laminate / wood flooring or carpet up to the existing skirting boards. End result is the skirting boards are too low.

So an inch or so above the existing skirting boards glue new wood or mdf strips (or more ornate moulding if you prefer) right around the room. Paint the new strips, and the 1" wall space between, and the existing skirting boards all the same 'trim' colour.

This gives you the look of deeper skirting boards without all the work. You can see examples of this on Instagram.

These are too deep for my taste but you get the idea:

Robyn Stanley | Skirting Hack The illusion of deeper more detailed skirting without all the effort of pulling the old ones off 😍 I really need to come up... | Instagram

@TroysMammy you can get a self-levelling compound that flows to level the area, adding just a thin layer on top of the tiles. You can then lino on top of that.

@TroysMammy Yes. We had rustic tiles levelled and have Amtico on top. Didn’t touch skirting boards. Looks great.