Loose Kitchen Floor Tiles

[Jakg]

The floor in my kitchen has quite a few cracked or loose tiles - initially it was frustrating but now it's getting quite bad, lots of the grout has come up.

Picture doesn't really do it justice

It's got to the stage where I can pull up some by hand.

The flooring came with the house and I wasn't sure what was under it - I was a bit worried to investigate in case I found some horrible rotten subfloor.
I think the tiles have been down for 5-10 years - before the previous owner it was laminate.

Based on underneath the cabinets, it looks like half the room has a solid concrete floor - and the tiles are all fine.

The other half, with all the bad tiles, looks like it's been laid straight over floor boards.

The boards seem pretty solid, with only a very small (<1mm) flex that I've seen on other boards - so I think the subfloor is actually ok?

I think the slight flex in the boards has cracked the adhesive, which has powdered and moved around and then the poorly supported tiles have cracked and started to move around.

Google seems to suggest laying tiles straight over floor boards without any tiling board is pretty rubbish, but to be fair I don't think the adjoining floor levels would've allowed the floor to be much higher.

I'm thinking to rip it all out and replace with laminate (which looks much easier than I expected to fit), my only slight concern is that I don't know what the difference in levels is between the boarded and concrete section is. But as there was laminate before I hope it's ok.

I've done some tiling and there's no way I'd do a floor myself.

 

[oldbutnotdead]

Sounds about right. Only 1 way to find out if there's a significant difference in floor level- pick a tile on the join and lift it out.
Underlay will deal with ± 2mm, more than that & you may have to get inventive
Laminate is pretty easy but you must leave a gap round the edges- neatest way is under the skirting board rather than scotias everywhere.

 

[Jakg]

Whats the best way of laying tiles on floorboards without affecting the finished floor level I already have?
I.E. is there an alternative to just relaying them direct on the boards.

Had a think and replacing the whole lot is a bit more than I want to do right now and wondering if replacing some of the broken tiles might be a quick fix for a couple of years.

 

[oldbutnotdead]

You can scrape the adhesive up and refix the tiles direct to the floorboards again if you want but they will fail again. Presumably you only have the previous owners' word for how long the tiles have been down- if he has tiled it to camouflage something nasty then you're best finding out about it sooner rather than later. The only difficult part will be lifting the tiles from the concrete floor (though that may be easier than you think, depends if the floor has an effective DPM under it. If it doesn't the tiles & adhesive will lift pretty easily).
You'll never get a decent job reusing cracked tiles so your temporary bodge is going to get quite pricey- time to clean all the old tiles up and the wooden floor, sourcing some replacements for the broken ones, tub of tile goo (or a bag of powder), tub/bag of grout, time to do the tiling....entirely up to you but IMHO you'll be much better off using that time and money to do a permanent job (laminate). Don't be too put off by naysayers about laminate in the kitchen- if you get decent stuff and don't throw bucketloads of water on the floor it'll last 10 years plus