How to level broken and uneven tiles for painting?

[lgtuffy]

We have a 120 year old terrace house with damaged and uneven tesselated tiles on the front porch.

This is a small area, around 3m2 but the tiles are broken, uneven and totally missing in one area.

We are unable to match the existing tiles and the quote for removing and re-tiling was $6000.

This cost is out of our budget, as we just want to tidy it up for rental.

It has been suggested we paint the tiles but they would need to be levelled to prepare for painting.

Any suggestions?

[Jewelleryrescue]

Hi @lgtuffy 

Retile  at $6000 is ridiculous price and they dont want the job. 

Maybe there is a  handyman  guy in your region that can  do it for $500 and that price is high.

There are plenty of things you  can do here but it comes down to what your comfortable at undertaking.

Its  a  quite small area maybe the best  way is to use a  hammer drill to chip those tiles out.  Those tiles maybe valuable to a person doing a heratige restoration project but it is hard to remove them with out breaking them.

Ozito 1500W 5J Rotary Hammer Drill Kit RHD-1550 I/N: 0382377 99.98

This  kit comes with a chisel to lift under those tiles until the cement is mostly clean.  I would use a house brick to polish sand the cement underneath  to  remove glue and make  area flat.

After that use some concrete paint to finish area off. Or  retile as you wish.

Others here will give more options for you too   

We will help you as we can

[EricL]

Hello @lgtuffy

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. It's a pleasure to have you join us, and thank you for sharing your question about painting your tiles.

It's great that you've received excellent advice from @Jewelleryrescue. I agree with the suggestions that have been proposed, it all depends on what you're willing to commit to. Looking at the photo, it seems part of the tiles are still in good condition. I propose having a think about what you would like to happen in the long run.

Here are a few possibilities:

• You leave the tiles as is and use self-levelling cement to cover the entire area. Once the cement cures, you can then paint over it with White Knight 4L Medium Grey Ultra Pave Quick Dry Paint. The drawbacks are if any of the old tiles come loose there will be movement underneath and you might see some cracks on the cement surface. 
   
• Remove all of the old tiles and resurface the area with cement or you can retile the area with new tiles. It will still be necessary to level the area and wait for that to cure before you can tile the surface again. The drawbacks are the old tiles might be very hard to remove being over 120 years old. However, removing them gives you peace of mind that the cement surface is new and is not likely to move or crack.
   
• You can attempt a partial repair of the area by cutting out the damaged tiled area of the floor and tiling the damaged area with a complimentary tile. Give the area a good clean and wait until you have the resources for a proper revamp of the area.

These are some of the ways you can move forward. If you have the time and resources to do a full repair that would be the ideal way to go about it. But if time is of the essence, you might have to consider the other methods I've suggested.          

Please keep us updated with your progress, we look forward to seeing the area repaired and ready for use.

If you need further assistance, please let us know.

Eric

[lgtuffy]

Thanks @jewellryrescue and Eric for your responses. Some good suggestions there I think. I’ll let you know which way we decide to go.