We Bought a Fixer Upper! Week 4: Kitchen Tile Floor Removal

We’re making some progress here at the house! This week’s task is to remove the tile floor in the kitchen. After taking out the wall dividing the living room and kitchen, the tile floor doesn’t allow the two spaces to flow together. We want it to look and feel cohesive, so we’ll be installing LVP flooring throughout the house, with the exception of the bathrooms. If you want more details on the wall removal, you can check out my previous post here.

We got an incredible deal on flooring from Lumber Liquidators during the closing sale! It wouldn’t have been our first choice, but for the price, we couldn’t beat it! Instead of being $3/sq ft we got it for $0.89/sq ft! We were able to get flooring for the entire house for just over $1000 which is absolutely unheard of. We lucked out! Unfortunately I can’t link it for you because LL no longer has it and as I mentioned, they are closing all of their stores.

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Ok back to the kitchen! Removing this tile was not an easy task. We used a hammer drill with a chisel bit and the compressor to chip up the tile. You can use a hammer drill like this that doesn’t need a compressor as well. We only had one hammer drill, so I used a pry bar and a hammer to remove tiles as well so we could both be working at the same time. We tried to preserve as many intact tiles as possible to maybe use them later. They look like slate and are really rough and not good for keeping a kitchen floor clean. I do think we could repurpose them outside at some point!

After removing the tile, we were in for a surprise! There was not just one layer of tile, but several layers underneath. For a hot second, we actually thought we discovered original wood parquet floors underneath the tile, but alas, it was just another layer of laminate. So that had to be removed as well along with a million staples. That was probably the most time consuming part, removing all the staples by hand, one at a time. Again, the best method we found for removing them was just with a hammer and a flathead screwdriver, much like removing the staples from the carpet pad a couple weeks ago.

Another word of warning, just like the popcorn ceilings could contain asbestos, so could the adhesive used for laminate flooring and even some types of tiles if your house was build before the mid 1980’s. Always good to have things tested before you disturb the flooring and potentially release harmful asbestos dust into the air.

Once we got rid of the tile and the laminate and everything else to get down to the subfloor, this job was done! Everything was going according to plan and we were right on schedule until we discovered an unexpected surprise with the electrical in the house. I’ll tell you all about it next week! Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!

We started installing the flooring in the living room and bedrooms first. We had to wait on the kitchen because the plan was to build a kitchen island and we needed to map out that footprint and install the base first. So stay tuned to see the finished floors and the custom kitchen island too!

Until then, happy DIY-ing!

-Selene Builds Things