Article with tips and tricks for effective removal of old tiles from the wall.
When you decide to renovate your house, apartment, or other space, in addition to the initial planning, it is necessary to solve the practical part of the renovation. The practical part of the renovation starts with the demolition phase, during which old surfaces or even entire structures are removed. This may involve removing paint, plaster, tiles or even an entire wall. In today’s article, we’ll go over some tips and tricks on how to cleverly remove old tiles, freeing up and preparing the space for new tiles or other surfaces. Don’t worry, it’s nothing complicated.
Safety is key
It is important to think about protection on the job before you start the actual removal. As soon as you start demolishing, loosening and chipping tiles, it is almost certain that the tiles will break and splinters will fly around the room.
Therefore, always make sure you wear safety goggles and protective gloves. They protect your eyes and hands from sharp pieces of tile that can blast off the wall during demolition.
Room protection
When removing tiles from the wall during partial renovations, it is important to protect the rest of the room and its furnishings. For example, if you are renovating a bathroom and large, sharp pieces of tile are falling off the wall, there is a high risk of scratching the tiles, bath, shower tray or basin. Before you start removing tiles from the wall, be sure to cover up important parts of the room! We recommend using cardboard or some old tarps to protect any of your utilities or sanitary equipment from damage.
Rough removal
When it comes to removing tiles from the walls, the first thing you can do is scrape out the grout and mortar between the tiles. This scraping will make it easier to loosen the tiles and consequently much easier and cleaner to remove. At the same time, this will reduce the likelihood of chipping and tearing off the tiles.
We recommend using the RUBISCRAPER tool to easily remove tiles from the wall, especially with cement-based grouts. This tool allows you to adjust the depth of removal of the adhesive mixture, reducing the risk of cutting too deeply into the wall, which can cause problems when re-tiling later on, as well as higher labour costs.
Its tungsten carbide blades mainly use pneumatic pressure instead of friction to remove the adhesive mixture. This means that unlike other methods such as sanding with a grinder, with RUBISCRAPER you won’t create dust, saving you clean-up time while eliminating the risk of dust inhalation.
The self-guiding system allows you to stay inside the joint, minimising the risk of damaging or breaking the tile when removing the adhesive grout, and the ergonomic design gives you greater comfort and a firm grip.
You could also use a simpler hand joint scraper for this task, but it is much more labour intensive to clean the joints.
Hammer and chisel
Now that you’ve removed the adhesive grout, it’s time to remove the tiles from the wall! In this step, you will only need a hammer and a chisel or chisel. Removing the first tile is usually the hardest because you can’t access it from the side. Insert the chisel into the crevice left by the scraped adhesive and tap it lightly with the hammer to apply pressure. This should loosen the tile from the glue. Depending on the size of the tiles and how well they are stuck to the adhesive on the wall, you may need to do this in a few different places on the tile. Once you have removed the first tile from the wall, you can start removing adjacent tiles along the new exposed edges. Alternatively, you can use an electric demolition hammer with a wide chisel to remove them. However, when using it, you risk damaging the underlying wall as well.
Removal of adhesive residues
After removing all the tiles from the wall, you need to scrape off the remaining glue as well.
You can use a scraper for this step. For the harder to remove parts of the glue, you may need a chisel and hammer. You can also use an electric demolition hammer with a wide chisel for this step. But be careful not to damage the underlying wall and poke unnecessary holes in it.
This system of working, however, will not remove all of the adhesive completely. To make sure that all the walls are evenly cleaned and leveled, sand down any remaining unevenness. Diamond grinding wheels are suitable for this task. This is strongly recommended if you are planning to re-tile the wall.
Cleaning the room
You are almost done. Use a shovel and broom to remove any loose pieces of tile or excess dust. For taking out the waste, construction buckets or chutes will definitely come in handy. An industrial vacuum cleaner will also be useful. With it, you can more easily remove all the small pieces of tiles and the remains of other building materials.
And that’s it! You may say to yourself that this is easy. For most it probably is, but following the right procedure and using the right tools will not only save you time, it will also reduce labour. And you’ll also appreciate the benefits of removing old tiles properly and perfectly, including the adhesive, when installing new tiles.
Article created in cooperation with profiobkladac.sk