Removing ceramic floor tiles to lay down some new ones.

[Mr Lil]

A few years ago we decorated our kitchen and got a pro in to lay some ceramic quarry tiles down.
He used a Unibond tile cement for wood floors. He layed the tiles on top of well stuck down vinyl tiles and scored them so they would adhere better.
However I'm redecorating the kitchen again and want to lay a new floor down as there are around ten broken tiles of which I cant get spares, so have no option.
Anyway, I'm going to need to remove the existing tiles and adhesive. Is this going to kill me and be avery long job as I dont have masses of time.
I'm a competent tiler but am worried I will start taking them up and will regret it.
The vinyl tiles underneath are laying on wodd floorboards.
Any help or experiences appreciated.
Paul

 

[gcol]

I'm surprised the tiles haven't come loose being laid basically on floorboards, but anyway.... the easiest way to get tiles up would be with an SDS drill with a wide chisel bit set on hammer only. However, the fact that your tiles are laid on top of vinyl tiles means that you should be able to quickly get them up with a spade - just slide the spade along the floor and see how it goes. With a bit of luck, you might get the tiles and the vinyl tiles up together.

Once you're back to bare floorboards, have a look half way down this page to see how to go about overboarding with ply before tiling.