Removing levelling compound from tiles - help

Tipster28

Hi - my wife and I bought our first house in Dec09.
Its a victorian terrace and needed some work. We've just started to tackle the hallway, pulled up the carpet to find levelling compound which is about an inch higher than the rest of the floors downstairs which are floor boards.
I chipped away a little and can see tiles underneath. Now why someone would cover up an original victorian floor is beyond me! But any suggestions how to remove the compound without damaging the tiles to much? I was originally going to chisel it but worry that I'll just end up scratching the tiles.

Any comments/suggestions appreciated

thanks,
Ben

Alan_M_2

You'll need a professional restoration to leave these looking anything like decent.

The surface will have to be ground off mechanically rather than chipped, then the original tiles refurbished.

This will not be cheap (into four figures).

Tipster28

thanks for the comments.
We want to remove the levelling compound in any case as having a floor higher than the others is a pain.

I guess we'll see how well it comes up and take it from there. We had looked at a new replica type floor so could do that rather than spend £££'s on cleaning.

Ben

Tipster28

you never know, could have been the first prototype victorian floor, with a rare design, once walked on by Queen Victoria herself :rotfl:

Canucklehead

Tipster28 wrote: »

Hi - my wife and I bought our first house in Dec09.
Its a victorian terrace and needed some work. We've just started to tackle the hallway, pulled up the carpet to find levelling compound which is about an inch higher than the rest of the floors downstairs which are floor boards.
I chipped away a little and can see tiles underneath. Now why someone would cover up an original victorian floor is beyond me! But any suggestions how to remove the compound without damaging the tiles to much? I was originally going to chisel it but worry that I'll just end up scratching the tiles.

Any comments/suggestions appreciated

thanks,
Ben

Good afternoon: now that's a real find...only the cretinous don't appreciate the value of refurbished Victorian floor tiles...probably 1000s sq/meters of it covered up by nasty laminate or carpet tiles in this country.. no accounting for taste.;)

Start saving now for the refurb and you'll have a real feature there.

More on maintaining period properties here.

HTH

Canucklehead

Alan_M_2

Also,

Price up the cost of replacing it before considering restoration.

See here:-

http://www.originalstyle.com/tile_victorian.htm

Tipster28

thanks for the links guys, had actually looked at the original style one before - dreaming of having such a floor.
Going to start tackling it over the weekend, wish me luck. Just have to stick with the softly softly approach and not get carried away...

Tipster28

Just in case anyone was interested, I finally managed to do this, a couple of photos below showing the work in progress and the finished floor.
Tiles are actually in pretty good condition and with some cleaning etc should look good. The end with the hole needs some work of course, plan is to get some replacement tiles to repair the broken ones and then sink a matt into the middle.