does salvaging tiles possible?

[clew]

Hi,
i just had a flooded living room and most of the ceramic tiles pops up and mostly broke.
since the space is quite big and the exact kind of tiles are no longer produced, i'm thinking of salvaging all of tiles from my room (some of them pop up too) to replace the ones on the living room.

so my question, is there a way to remove the tiles with least risk of breaking them?
i did some googling, but didn't get any good info. the best i found useful was maybe removing the grout before removing the tiles.

also i'm thinking if it is possible to intentionally make them pops, therefore not much chiseling and chipping the tiles.

Thanks

[royaloakcarpentry]

It depends how many you need as to whether you can get enough up undamaged.

As floor tiles should be laid with a cement based adhesive it is doubtful you will clean them up for reuse.

You also need to take into account that due to the flood, a certain percentage of the tiles although looking fine, may well have too high a moisture content and be useless.

[clew]

it would need about 50% of my room's tiles (not flooded btw).
basically its just to patch/cover up the hole on the living room.
i am just wondering if there's any way to remove most of them undamaged.

[royaloakcarpentry]

The highest probability is that they will not come up without damage. If you are lucky to have enough from ripping the room up then you would still have the problem of cleaning cement based adhesive off a ceramic tile......Not going to happen.

How do you know the floor is sound under the still tiled areas of the lounge, after the flood?

Water has a habit of tracking and causing damage if not exposed and the area dried out.

[clew]

i know that the rest of the area that look fine now might also pop up in the future.
however, the lounge area(including areas that are not partitioned/walled) ±1000 sq ft, to replace all the tiles will cost a lot.
each 1 sq ft tiles cost around 4$ here. where as the current affected area ±100 sq ft.
so i am thinking if just to cover that area with used/salvaged tiles will be more efficient even though it won't look really neat, rather than just covering it with cement.

let say salvaging and replacing with the salvaged tiles is not an option, is there any suggestion to fix the lounge area?

thanks for your replies and opinion by the way~ my apologies if i seem stubborn and maybe bad choices of words (its not my native language).

[royaloakcarpentry]

If you can't salvage enough tiles then you could infill with a different tile and make it look like a feature.