Probably asking a stupid question?

[Reamhar]

We're (hopefully) about to move into a new house, and the tiles in the kitchen are yuck, to put it mildly. Wall after wall of terracotta nightmare. That said, there's no chance that I can persuade hubby to re-tile the room after all the cost of a house move. So I'm trying to come up with an economical way to update the tiles without too much cost.

My brilliant (and probably stupid idea) was to remove random tiles, and replace them with the same size tiles in different colours, to update the room.

This of course assumes that is is possible to remove a tile at a time without causing damage to the surrounding tiles, and possible to retile into the resulting hole.

Is this at all possible, or am I "barking up the wrong tree" completely?

Also, any suggestions on how to go about this?

 

[mountford]

The first promblem I can see is trying to get the tiles out with out breaking the surrounding tiles like you said, this has to be done by taking the grout out from around the tiles and then smashing the tile you want out, then you would have to grind away all the old adhesive and then find a tile at the same depth or near to the original tile. Once fixed the tile in you have got the problem of trying to match up the grout as any new grout will stand out a mile.

My personal opinion I would wait until you have a little extra cash and do the job in 1 hit.

 

[JohnD]

you could paint them

or even paper over the top

 

[gcol]

I agree with mountford, except you'd chisel the adhesive away, not grind it. When you replace the tile and re-grout, you can blend the grout in by rubbing it with a green scotchbrite pad - try it. Works for freshening up grout too.

 

[D1nhs]

Ive moved into a house with floral tiles in the kitchen.

Ive done the same and i found it quite easy. You need to buy a grout scraper from your diy store, scrape out the grout. I drilled a few holes in the tile also, which made it a little easier when hacking off

Make sure you find a tile that is the correct size before you start. The tiles in my kitchen were so old that the tile shop no longer stocked that size and thickness.

Good luck