Replacing an Old Tile Floor in Garner and Clayton: Removal, What Is Underneath and New Tile

Repair, cover or replace?

A single cracked tile with no others loose can often be cut out and replaced, if you have a spare from the original job. Without a spare, a match is hard to find, and a mismatched tile in the middle of the kitchen tends to bother people more than the crack did.

Several cracks running in a line, tiles that sound hollow when tapped, or grout that keeps crumbling usually mean something underneath is moving: the subfloor is flexing, the slab has cracked, or the tile was never fully bonded. Replacing the cracked tiles without fixing that just moves the problem a year or two down the road. At that point the floor needs to come up.

Can new tile go over old tile?

Sometimes, if the old tile is flat, solidly bonded and free of cracks. In practice it rarely makes sense in a kitchen or bathroom. It raises the floor by the thickness of the new tile and its mortar, which can stop the dishwasher sliding out from under the counter, leave the toilet flange too low, and create a step at every doorway. And if the old floor is cracking, the new floor inherits whatever caused it.

If you want to avoid removal, a better option over sound, flat tile is often a rigid-core vinyl floor, which adds far less height. Our guide to luxury vinyl tile (LVT) explains when that is a good fit and when real tile is still the better choice.

What removal involves

Tearing out tile is the loudest and dustiest part of the job, and it is worth knowing what to expect.

• ✓Tile on a wood subfloor: tile is usually set on cement backer board screwed to the subfloor. The tile and the backer usually come up together, leaving the plywood to inspect.
• ✓Tile on a concrete slab: the tile is chipped off, and the old thinset is ground down so the new floor has a flat, clean surface to bond to. Grinding is dusty, so we seal off doorways and vents.
• ✓Older mortar-bed floors: some older homes have tile set in a thick bed of mortar. This is heavy work and adds height, so the new floor may sit lower than the old one, which changes transitions.
• ✓Fixtures: the toilet is pulled and reset with a new wax ring, appliances are moved out, and baseboards or shoe molding usually come off.
• ✓Old sheet vinyl underneath: in older homes, tile was sometimes laid over vinyl flooring. Vinyl flooring and adhesives made before the 1980s can contain asbestos, so if we find old sheet goods we stop and recommend testing before it is disturbed.

What we often find underneath

Water damage around the toilet, tub or dishwasher is the most common surprise. A slow leak can soften the subfloor for years without showing through tile. Any soft or stained sheathing is cut out and replaced, and if the joists are affected they are repaired before anything else happens.

The second common finding is the reason the floor cracked. On a wood subfloor, that is usually too much flex: a subfloor that is too thin for tile, or joists that bounce. On a slab, it is a crack in the concrete that has carried through the tile above it. Both have fixes, from adding a layer of plywood to an uncoupling membrane that lets the tile ride over small movements. Our guide to tile installation that lasts covers substrates, membranes and movement joints in detail, and our guide to subfloor repair covers what happens when the damage is deeper.

Choosing the new tile

Porcelain is the usual choice for floors: it is denser and absorbs less water than ceramic, and through-body or color-body porcelain hides chips better. Larger tiles, such as 12 by 24 inches and up, give fewer grout lines and a more modern look, but they need a flatter floor, so leveling may be part of the job. Ask for a slip rating suitable for wet areas in bathrooms and entries.

Grout matters as much as the tile. A color close to the tile hides staining, and some grouts resist stains far better than traditional cement grout. Our guide to tile patterns and layouts helps with size, layout and grout width.

Timeline, and kitchens with cabinets

A typical bathroom floor takes a few days from removal to grout, with time for repairs, the mortar to set and the grout to cure. A kitchen floor takes longer, mostly because of size and appliances. You can usually walk carefully on new tile within a day or two, but heavy appliances go back once the grout has cured.

In most kitchens the tile runs to the base cabinets rather than under them, so the old tile is cut cleanly along the cabinet bases. If you are planning new cabinets as well, the order of the work matters; our guide to what comes first in a kitchen remodel explains how to sequence it.

Tile replacement in Garner and Clayton

Garner has housing from almost every decade, and Clayton has fast-growing newer neighborhoods alongside older homes near downtown, so we see both slab and crawlspace floors in both towns. Our Angier showroom is about 28 minutes from Garner and 30 from Clayton, and we bring tile samples to your home. At the free estimate we tap the existing floor for hollow spots, look for the cause of any cracking, and give you a written quote with removal, repairs and installation listed separately.

APW has been family-owned in Angier since 1973. Our installation professionals are background-checked and trained, every job carries our 100% product and labor guarantee, and 0% financing (same as cash) is available. See tile flooring in Garner, tile flooring in Clayton, bathroom remodeling and flooring repair in Garner, or book a free estimate.