The first several days I spent removing old flooring. There was carpet in the living room and 2 bedrooms, tile everywhere else. The carpet came up easily. The condo building has a "construction dumpster" where you can dump construction materials, but it turns out it was smallish dumpster, so I couldn't just dump the carpet in there, it needed to be cut up. I found the easiest way to remove the carpet was to first cut it along the length of the room, in 4-foot wide strips, using a sharp utility knife. Then pull it up from the tack strips holding it down, and roll it up. Each roll was kinda heavy in the 25-foot-long family room. A 100 sq ft piece of carpet (25 ft x 4 ft) I'd guestimate weighed about 80-100lbs. I stacked them up in the room nearest the front door in anticipation of eventually taking them downstairs to the dumpster.
Tack Strips and Pad
I figured the tack strips would come up easy by prying up with a screwdriver. Psyche! The first strip I tried to get up just broke the wood, while the nails stayed firmly in place. I finally figured after some research that I could just hit them sideways using a 4 inch "cold chisel" positioning directly on the side of the tack strip where a nail was, and hit it once with a 4 lb "drilling hammer". Sure enough the nails popped out (leaving a small hole in the concrete, more on this later).
The carpet pad was a little messier, as the original installer used glue in certain areas. I just cut up the pad just like the carpet. The plan was the grind down the floor later on in prep for tile, so I figured this stuff would come up then.
Took a couple of hours to cut up and remove all the carpet and padding, then another 30 mins. for the tack strips.
The concrete was in surprisingly good shape. I couldn't find a single crack and it looked somewhat level. I did see several humps and bumps but nothing too crazy. Looked like tile would be a piece of cake. Heh. Wishful thinking.
Removing the old tile
Now on to the fun part. I did a lot of research to find the best way to remove old tile and the associated thinset underneath. I found several youtube videos, DIY sites, etc. Here were my options:
1. By hand (chisel and hammer). I did not like the thought of this one, since there was probably about 800 sq ft of tile to remove.
2. Hire a contractor. Didn't feel like the $3 per sqft for tile removal was worth it. How hard could it be?
3. Floor stripper. There were enticing videos online of this contraption that looked like a riding lawn mower. It has this big vibrating blade on the front, and you just drive it across the floor, and it strips up whatever is in its path. Sounded awesome and fun, but a little expensive, and I wouldn't be able to get into the tight spots in the bathrooms and utility room.
4. Rotary hammer + 4" blade. This one looked ok, but a lot more manual labor that the stripper (that's what she said).
After calling around to various rental shops, they all said that #4 was the best option. So, off to Sunbelt rentals I went.
Rotary Hammer
The hammer itself is basically a jackhammer. The way they work is there's this piston inside that is driven up and down by an electic motor. The part that actually removes the tiles is a blade with a shaft that goes up into the hammer, and the piston smashes that on every stroke (much like the head of a hammer pounding a nail). So you push the blade against the edge of a tile, and the hammer hits the blade and it chips away. Loud, vibrating, and heavy. I found the best way was to get underneath the tile and pop it up in large chunks. I was able to blast through several tiles at a time if I kept the blade at a low angle. Occasionally I'd hit a tough spot, requiring a higher angle to chip it away.
Thinset
Turns out the tiles were the easiest part to remove. I think the previous installer was cheap and didn't use the proper bonding agents, because the self levelling underlayment material was delaminated and came up by hand in several spots.
I found the best way was to hold the hammer at a higher angle, and "walk" through the thinset with a lot of pushing down on the hammer. It was a bit like mowing a lawn, only much slower and dustier. It created huge plumes of dust. Luckily the condo was empty, and I had turned the A/C off on advice from elsewhere. Everything in the unit was coated in a fine white powder residue of thinset.
I'd decided early on that I wasn't going to remove any of the appliances or vanities. So I wanted to get up as much flooring as possible closest to the appliances and walls. Here I just placed the head of the blade on the top of the tile, up against the cabinet, and jackhammered almost straight down and it broke up the material right at the cabinet. Some may wish to take out cabinets first, but I am not that ambitious. I figure I can just butt the new tile up against the old, and put some finishing moulding around the perimeter of the tile.
Disposal
I'd mentioned the construction dumpster earlier. Well I filled that b**ch up twice with carpet and thinset.
That was a lot of elevator trips with a 5 cubic ft. wheelbarrow and shovel. Get one of those construction shovels with a flat face on it. Wear gloves and eye protection. I found out the hard way that gloves are needed. Ceramic tile is sharp as krunk.
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