I've been asked to remove some slate floor tiles in a massive kitchen.
They seem to be laid on a layer of plywood or possibly blockboard which is in turn laid onto the original floorboards.
The owners want to salvage as many as possible so the can sell them. The tiles are about 20mm thick.
Questions:
How do I remove them
Will they come off whole or are they more likely to break
I'm thinking of doing it by levering my massive crowbar under the blockboard/plywood layer to loosen than in the hope that the flexing of the layer will break the bond between the tiles and the blockboard layer.
I had a job recently where I had to remove three damaged terrazo type tiles on a ply sub floor. They were damaged at the edges, but I had to be careful because there were only four spare tiles.
I drilled into one tile in a line, then used a bloster chisel to extend the line. Then I worked outwards towards the edges. I'd removed as much grout as possible beforehand with a grout rake.
I got all three tiles out without much trouble. I reckon a similar technique would work on a whole floor.
I reckon break one central tile out, even if you trash it - the work outwards.
The likelihood is that they will break, or come up covered in cement, which will need chipping off, and or dissolving off in brick acid.
Yoiu have to balance the time and expense of cleaning them against their value. cheap multicolored riven Indian slate can be bought for as little as 16 a square meter, good grey Indian is about 20-25.
When I laid my floor, the final cost, including my time, was about 100 a square meter..huge amounts of labour, and cement (about as expensive as the tiles when used thick to cover irregularities) grout, sealant and endless hours. The hours could have been spent getting the floor dead level, but they were spent putting the tiles down.
It is a rule that expensive materials cheap labour is usually cheaper than cheap materials expesnive labour..on average materials constitute
1/3rd of the cost of any building project. This is higher admittdely when interior finishes and fitments come into play, but its still usually around 1/2
Which is why you find skips full of perfectly good tiles, sheets of marble and stone and the like. The cost of reusing them exceeds teh cost of buying new.
I am sure it will in some case. In others the slates will snap. In all cases they will be filthy and covered in cement.
Quote £45 a square meter carefully remove and clean up what slate they get, and then tell them that new slate is £23 a sq meter.
A badly laid cheap slate floor is awful.. I have good fairly flat slate kitchen and it cleans up pretty well..we have dogs and cats and it needs it.
In laws have even more animals, and kids, and don't clean it properly, and have a HEAVILY riven surface, and frankly, they might as well cover it in sawdust its so disgusting. It needs a good hands a knees scrub..which mine gets every six months. They don't do hands and knees and they Czech girl doesn't either. Tossers.
There are people who aspire to slate, and natural wood, and all the magazine stuff, but whose sanitary habits are better suited to a sheet of cheap vinyl that gets relaid every year.
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