How to Take Up Ceramic Floor Tile
- 1). Remove fixtures from the room, such as toilets and pedestal sinks, before you begin the project. Clear all furniture from the room as well.
- 2). Put on goggles and protect your skin from flying bits of tile by wearing long sleeves, pants and closed toe shoes.
- 3). Start in the middle or along one edge of the room. Insert a cold chisel along a grout line and pound on it with a mallet or sledge hammer. Once the grout is removed from two or three tiles, angle the chisel at the base of one tile and hit the chisel with your mallet.
- 4). Pull up the first few tiles and examine the subfloor. If there is a mortar bed beneath the tile, chisel all the way down to the tar paper under the mortar. Use a large tool, such as a flatbar, to pull up big chunks of tile and mortar at once. Tiles attached to plywood can be removed one row at a time using your chisel and mallet. Alternatively, you can remove two rows of tile and then cut through the plywood with a reciprocating saw just enough to make room for the flatbar. Then insert the flatbar into the cut and remove the tile, plywood and all.
- 5). Stop intermittently as you work to throw away pieces of tile. Not only are pieces of tile sharp and therefore a safety concern, but debris across the floor makes it difficult to see your progress.
