Reclaimed floor tiles

[Toby Newell]

What’s there at the moment are standard modern ceramic tiles. They are extremely tough-I’ve been dropping large lumps of cement onto them from 11ft up and not a chip! I think they are laid on a sheet of ply. Unlike any other floor in this house, it’s dead level, so when I come to take them up, maybe I’ll do the same?

yes, ply will probably be damaged. I only ever use ply, structural or WPB / 18mm. Do not understand false economy of osb / chipboard, horrendous stuff. Two jobs come to mind in two of the most expensive locations in the country, must be £6M + properties, Eaton Place and Summertown in Oxford.

Floor looks lovely but can you do anything about the bowing, tenting, exposed tongues and areas of bounciness?

Yes. But it would involve ripping out your built in furniture / flooring / chipboard subfloor and fitting new. The Oxford house was several hundred sqm over 5 floors.

 

[Toby Newell]

High praise indeed, thanks very much.

You might want to close your eyes for this bit but, although I had good intentions of installing reclaimed parquet (I even had it in stock), an about to be crawling baby with no finished room in the house dictated that I threw laminate down. The sub-floor was constructed in a way though in which if we're still here in 20 years and life has slowed down a bit then I could do as I had hoped and fit the parquet.

All things considered though I think it turned out OK

View attachment 9269

Never seen the differential colour above the picture rail before.

I love the colours, they look fantastic together. Also rare to have that green tile colour, you have very good taste and you have done a very nice, clean job. Really nice.

I hope your blue isn't chalk paint, if so don't touch it, as it marks if you look at it too hard!

Laminate colour goes great with the rest.

I will let you off your lack of mitred border.

 

[Cassie]

yes, ply will probably be damaged. I only ever use ply, structural or WPB / 18mm. Do not understand false economy of osb / chipboard, horrendous stuff. Two jobs come to mind in two of the most expensive locations in the country, must be £6M + properties, Eaton Place and Summertown in Oxford.

Floor looks lovely but can you do anything about the bowing, tenting, exposed tongues and areas of bounciness?

Yes. But it would involve ripping out your built in furniture / flooring / chipboard subfloor and fitting new. The Oxford house was several hundred sqm over 5 floors.

Thanks Toby-decent ply it is! Not planning to do this twice!

 

[MatthewC]

I quite agree with the advice about getting the whole floor level - yes, it's quite difficult and it gets more difficult when the tiles are small. The tiles shown are interesting as they look much the same as I was looking for last year for my hall floor, without success, as I wanted to match some I already had. Be aware that if you need any more of exactly the same size then they might be quite difficult to find!

 

[Cassie]

Thanks Matthew-shame you didn’t find all the tiles you wanted. I have laid mine out in the pattern in the right size for the floor-I have more than enough of most, so can be picky about which I use. Most are very clean and I’ve found I can nibble off any residual grout with pliers without damaging them. However, the buff rectangular edging tiles seem to have fared least well and I don’t quite have enough good ones for the inner and outer border. What I thought I’d try is to complete the inner border with original tiles and try to find replacement ones for the outer border, accepting that they might not be an exact match, but hopefully good enough to look good. If I can’t find anything close enough, I might need to get different border tiles altogether