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Hi, I wanted to tile the downstairs floor of my house with the same type of tile.
Ripped up the carpet in the living room and found flat concrete base...cool. Banged out old tiles in kitchen and again found a nice base that I could tile over.
Problem has come when I took out tiles in a small toilet room. When tiles were removed a sandy/concrete??? type of base was found that could be easily gouged into. What is this? What do I need to do before I can tile through this area?
Any help appreciated.

has there been a leak, its possible the concrete has broken down, due to water?

How old is the house?

Is there any chance of a picture of the floor, it will make answering easier?

Thanks for your replies guys...need all the help I can get.
Have attached a couple of photos of the floor. Because of the lighting the photos are a bit darker than actual colour but I think you get the idea.
House is 10 years old...there is a sink in the room so yes a chance it got wet.
Where to from here?

Ok after more bashing and a lot of sweeping this is what the floor looks like now....not as sandy but definitely not ready for tiling i suspect.

Ive also added a photo of the area of removed tiles from the kitchen....question "what is the easiest way to remove the mortar used to stick the tiles. At the moment trying to chisel it off but its a bitch!"

Sorry for the late reply, I could not get to the computer yesterday to answer

The pictures are great by the way


The easiest way to remove the old tiles and adhesive is with an SDS drill that has rotor stop and a flat chisel, this makes light work of removing them. I have borrowed this picture from ascot tiling-



I was asking how old the house was because a hundred years or so ago, in certain areas it was not unusual to find houses with no floors at all, if you lifted the carpets in the living room you would find earth! But as your house is new, this is clearly not the case.

As long as the surface is solid you should be able to tile onto it with few problems at all.

The best thing to do is get the adhesive that you are going to use and then see if it needs a primer, if it does prime the surface first. This will take the absorbancy out of the surface and prevent it from sucking the moisture out of the adhesive too quickly.

Still looks wet at the end... is it uniformaly the same from end to end?

Yeah it is a bit wet at the end....due to my efforts getting the toilet out! Trying to dry it out now. Otherwise it is the same throughout in that toilet room.

Will have to go out and hire one of those drills for the kitchen area....getting the tiles up is ok but can't see me getting through that mortar in the next year without some extra help.

Will I have to use a levelling compound first for that toilet room or can I just use the adhesive to flatten it out (with primer if needed)????

Thanks heaps for your help guys!

It depends how un level the floor is, the adhesive can compensate for grooves etc in the floor but if it is really unlevel or has large hollows than it may be best to level it first.

Cheers. Thanks again