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Topic: Removing thinset

xofrancescaxo

Tue, 01/29/2008 - 4:25pm

Removing thinset

Hi, My fiance and I have just bought a condo and have begun numerous DIY projects. We have successfully removed the ceramic tile from the kitchen floor but a lot of the thinset remained. It seems they used different tiles in the exposed area between the cabinets and this is where the thinset has remained on the floor( bottom right in the picture) I tried to remove it by chiseling but it took me about an hour to remove a single square foot. Is there an easier way to do this? or can we just tile over it? its not exceptionally even since its only in the middle. -Francesca

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Thin set removal

Fidget1479 writes:

Wed, 01/30/2008 - 6:27am

There are several ways to remove the thin set. You can sand down the area with a hand grinder. You can get abrasive disks from a hardware store and use them to sand down the area. (You can also rent a floor sanding with screens on the bottom from a rental place, but that seems like a bit much for the smaller area.)

You'll want to get the floor as level as you can so the tiles don't create a speedbump in the kitchen.

Instead of tiling the kitchen you can apply and overlay and acid stain the floor. Check out www.DCsurfaces.com! Products include: concrete countertops, acid stain, concrete resurfacing and more...

DCsurfaces.com Acid Stain Overlay

Hi Francesca, I went through

kimarama writes:

Fri, 02/01/2008 - 2:26pm

Hi Francesca, I went through the exact same process as you -- this Fall, I pulled up my old kitchen tiles (they were fug) and found an absolute mess of old mastic/hard cement. A guy at Home Depot sold me mastic remover that was completely toxic. The fumes made me dizzy and it literally burned my skin everywhere it touched me. I had to stop in the middle and rinse it all off. Yuck. Some quick internet research led me to a product called Bean-e-doo. It's a powerful mastic remover that's made from soybeans so it's completely nontoxic and Earth friendly. It worked like a charm. You just pour it on the floor, let it sit for a couple hours and then scrape off the mastic with a trowel (or similar scraping tool). It was odorless and didn't burn my skin at all. It also removed most of of the mastic. Good luck with your project!