Bathroom tiles...

[adamomitcheney]

Hi All,

We've just installed a new shower (driven by new combi) in the bathroom and taken out the old electric shower. This has left us with one tile that is has a rectangular section cut out and a few screw holes - it was under the old shower and the hole was for the water feed. We've tried to find replacement tiles but haven't been able to - the nearest we could is about 3mm larger in all dimensions - so I reckon it would be best, as we only need one tile, to steal it from the three used for the sink splash-back and replace the splash-back with new tiles.

I've read the postings on removing tile adhesive, so I guess that this is a viable method - am I right? Can anyone give me any hints on getting a tile off whole? Is there anything in this method that I need to watch out for?

Once again, thanks in advance for the collective illuminating wisdom!

Thanks - Adam...

[Paul Andrews]

snip

Is there anything in this method that I need

..your wife deciding that the she didn't like the old tiles and perhaps retiling altogether would be a better idea.. ;-)

Paul

[John Schmitt]

If the tiles were properly fixed with good adhesive, you have no chance of removing a tile intact. Hope that they were put in by a cowboy. Experience suggests this is the more likely case.

John Schmitt

[Peter Johnson]

If you have three chances to save one every one will break; if you don't care they will come off intact. That's the law of sod.

[bigcat]

cant you lift one from behind the mirror/cabinet/loo etc? Or try anyway.

Bodges are fill it and paint to match, or fit a soap dish there. When it saves retiling the whole room, those bodges start looking very tempting.

Always always store the spare tiles somewhere.

NT

[Stuart Noble]

But you can maximise your chances by tapping a 4" flexible filling knife or paint scraper behind it with a hammer. They often break with a bolster because it's too rigid

[Michael Atkinson]

I've just pulled most of the tiles off our kitchen wall, and from reading the other replies these must have been originally placed by a cowboy ;-)

Before doing this job I'd read through many threads in this group. One referenced a tile removing tool (see

- basically a metal plate welded to an impact block). I got one, and this *did* remove most of the tiles intact.

My intent was to minimise damage to the walls behind. The exact opposite of what I had been expecting occurred: those tiles on an internal plasterboard wall came off easily, with virtually zero damage (perhaps the wall hadn't been pre-treated with a bonding agent?), whereas those on an external plaster-on-breezeblock wall often took some plaster with them.

So if you're in a similar situation to me, you can get the tiles off. But I'd imagine it's then a bugger of a job getting the old tile adhesive off these tiles!

Best of luck, Mike Atkinson

[adamomitcheney]

Oh, these guys were definitely cowboys. I guess, though, that Sod's law states that this will be the one job they did properly...

[adamomitcheney]

Thanks Stuart, I'll give that a try...

[adamomitcheney]

Not sure how that's easier that lifting them from the splashback. In any case, no...

Not an option when it's someone else's work...

[adamomitcheney]

Thanks Mike. I've checked out threads on this group, but so far only found ones dealing with removing old adhesive from tiles, not removing tiles intact. Maybe it's worth looking at the tool, although =A335 is a lot of money for one tile...

Thanks again - Adam Cheney...

[Chris Bacon]

Which guys? What job? What context? - none.

[adamomitcheney]

Blimey - didn't realise I had to provide context for that. Is that relevant to the question I asked? Why do you want to know?

As it happens, the company who bought the colony flat we now live in and performed the loft conversion around 6 years ago are the guys in question. Just about every job we've uncovered so far has proved to be half-arsed - it looks very much like they worked out their budget, got architects drawings done, and then got about 50% of the way through it before realising that they'd blown their budget and had to finish it on a shoestring.

There. Does that help? Do you feel like you have a better handle on my question about removing tiles whole from a wall? Are you in a position to provide me with that killer tip now?

Adam...

[Chris Bacon]

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

[adamomitcheney]