How To Remove Ceramic Tile Flooring
At one time or another, we will all want to replace our flooring. If your current flooring is ceramic tile and you want to replace it, you've got a lot of work to do. This is hard, messy work and you're going to be sore for awhile.
You could take the slow way and use a hammer and chisel, or even a 6-foot breaker bar, but for the money and speed, I would rent an electric hand jackhammer. This is the mini version of a traditional jackhammer. Before you fire it up, you need to prepare for it.
You must wear eye protection, hearing protection, breathing protection, knee pads, and gloves. This little jackhammer will spit shards of tile everywhere. Remove the furniture from the area and drape heavy drop cloths along the base of the walls.
It may make sense to start in the middle of the room and work towards the walls or start at the entryway and work your way in, it's your choice. You will find yourself breaking up tile and then using a wheelbarrow to haul it out of the house. You might also think about protecting the floor where you will be running the wheelbarrow as it will tend to leave a track of dirt from it's tire.
The trick is to try to lift the tile with the blade of the jackhammer. So you will want to keep the jackhammer at a low angle and attack the edge of the tile in hopes that the blade separates it from the sub-floor it is attached to. Otherwise it will shatter the tile and you just have more pieces to sweep up.
Realize that the jackhammer won't remove every piece of mortar from the floor. For this you can use a floor scraper. This is a large steel blade attached to a long wood handle. Once you've got everything cleaned up, you can start thinking of installing your new floor.