www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Hi guys, thought I'd sign up here and seek some professional advise.

Moved house not long ago and now working my round the house removing traces of the previous owner's questionable taste!

I'm onto doing the bathroom now - plan is to replace the toilet, sink and tiled floors. Bath to remain (for now).
I've removed as much tiles as I can so the sink and toilet are still functional. Problem now seems to be removing the grout / adhesive from the back of the old tiles from the floorboards. Some of it has come up but there are sections that are absolutely refusing to budge - have tried a chisel, scrapers, a Bosch PFM 180E tool and I'm getting nowhere fast.

Thickness of the old grout varies from 1mm to 3mm at the worst parts but I could probably reduce this down to between 1 and 2mm.
Photos of the offending room below:

General view of bathroom.



Worst looking area (around 3mm thick)




I have 600 x 600 x 9thk Porcelain tiles which I plan to lay down.

Floor area to be covered isn't spectacularly huge either, only 1500 x 1700.

Question I have is would I get away with fixing 6mm plyboard over the floorboards and the existing grout / adhesive then laying the 600mm tiles on top or would there likely be too much flex and movement?

This existing grout / adhesive really is a pain to shift and the only other option I can think of (which is a bit extreme) is to remove the existing floorboards completely and starting from scratch.

Your thoughts and opinions much appreciated.

Pie

to remove the adhesive: use a Rota stop SDS drill with chisel bit in it.

if those tiles you have are 9mm thick already, by the time you add adhesive you are going to have a fairly substantial step up into your bathroom.

if the previous tiles were fixed directly to the floorboards, they shouldn't have been. if they were fixed to ply, then remove the ply to get rid of the previous adhesive.

if you have to lay anything down again don't use ply, use Hardibacker cement boards.

any tiles on floors other than cement should have the correct adhesive used so make sure you get the "flexible" SP1 powder.

just 2 pointers:

a) if your replace the sink & toilet they will make the existing bath look old if you don't change it.
b) using large tiles on a small area makes the room look small.

The minute you try to remove that adhesive your in trouble....big time...


It a chipboard floor(weetabix)....no matter what you use...you will damage that floor big time...

Either replace or overboard with backer board,but the floor looks goosed to me so IMO rip it up and replace....

Is it a ground floor or first floor?...

Looking at your pics again....

The joists are more than 400 centre and nailed down..not very often!!!...yours look 600mm centres...so lots of movement/bounce...that why your original tiles probably came up very very easy?

Replace with min 18 mm wbp ply,prime underside and edges...sbr will do..

Sister up joists and beef up with dwangs then screw wbp ply every 150mm....

Cement based flexiable addy and grout...

Thanks for the feedback and suggesiton guys.
In the end I decided to just rip up the floor boards and start afresh.
I borrowed a work colleague's circular saw and removed the majority of the old boards - avoided going too near the walls.

Some photos of before, during and after.
Got the last coat of paint on 0130 on Christmas Day so was cutting things really fine since I was hosting this year!

Before





During




Toilet gone


Basin gone


Boards coming up
I'm not particulaarly great cutting a straight line as you'll see later on.




Replacement boards down
As you can see there are some gaps between the boards!


WBP Ply screwed down every 150mm (or thereabouts)


Tiling started




Tiling complete


Grouting complete and toilet installed
Noticed a very small leak where the service pipe meets the cistern inlet. Checked, rechecked and checked again that the rubber washer wasn't warped or damaged but was still getting a drip every 2 seconds with the water turned on.
Googled the problem (seemingly quite common) and replaced with a fibre washer; leak stopped!


Basin and Stand installed


Final Product
Wall cabinet and shelf unit from Ikea.

looking great to me
nice work