To those who got ceramic tile up? How?

I used a 3 lb maul and just beat on it until it broke the tile and mortal underneath. Once it broke I just swept it up.

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just break one tile and go to town?

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pretty much, just sort of lightly tap at it to get a space cleared out to start working in, it's the vibration that gets it up, not so much the force of the impact

"It's Hammertime!"



Basically ceramic tile is like flat glass glued to the floor.

Removing it is not rocket science.

Air hammer worked decent, hammer pry bar and chisel worked equally as well. The tile was the easy part, getting the thinset up- now that was another problem. Ended up just beating the piss out of the spots of it with a hammer but I learned after the fact that you can heat it up with a propane torch and it will come right off the concrete.

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I redid 1200 sqft in my dining room and the hammer chisel worked. OP - you're probably going to have to put some self leveling concrete afterwards if there is some pitting. Good luck and hope it works out

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depending on what the new flooring is going to be, it's not always necessary to remove the tile

jackhammer trolley

Once you get one up, a good whack from a hammer on a pry bar will get each tile popped up. Getting the thinset cleaned off completely is a different story. I've only done it on 5-10 square foot areas, so luckily didn't deal with much. Getting the tiles up wasn't hard though and think I could get a decent sized room up in an afternoon.

550 sq ft.

You can probably get away with not using an air hammer. It's pain in the arse no matter what. Those chisels with the grip on them they sell at HD are the way to go if you go that route.

If you have an air compressor, I bought the $40 air hammer and $9 chisel set from HD. But again we only used that half the time and switched to hammers pry bars and chisels.