Tile removal and demolition

What tile demolition actually involves

Getting tile off a slab or a wood subfloor is not a quiet process. We bring rotary hammers with chisel bits, floor scrapers, and a lot of buckets. The goal is to strip everything down to the substrate: the bare concrete or the plywood subfloor that was covered up years ago. On a slab, the thinset from the original install is often still solid, and getting it flat again takes time. On a wood subfloor, we have to be careful not to blow through the plywood or damage joists while breaking the bond.

You hear the hammer running for a good stretch, and even with vacuum shrouds on the tools and zip walls sealing the work area, fine silica dust is part of the reality. We run HEPA dust extractors attached to the demo hammer to catch what we can at the source, and we wet down debris before shoveling it out. By the time the room is bare, you can see every crack, every low spot, and every place the old thinset did not bond. That view of the substrate is what tells us how much prep the new tile will need.

What the substrate usually looks like after we strip it

A concrete slab that had tile on it rarely comes out glass smooth. You see ridges from the old trowel lines, spots where the original thinset let go, and often a crack or two that the old tile was hiding. A crack running through the slab does not mean the house is falling down. It usually means the concrete did what concrete does over time, and we need to address it before new tile goes on so the crack does not telegraph up through the new grout joints.

On a wood subfloor, you might find old vinyl glue, staples, or patches of backer board somebody screwed down years ago. Sometimes the plywood is solid and just needs a clean scrape. Other times we find a soft spot around a toilet flange or a tub edge where water sat and the plywood swelled. That rot has to be cut out and replaced, and nobody knows it is there until the old tile and underlayment come up. Demo is where the real scope of a job shows up. A bathroom floor that looked fine before tear out can turn into a subfloor repair before a single new tile is set.

Dust control, debris, and haul off

We take dust seriously because tile dust does not just wipe up with a damp rag. It gets into ducts if you are not careful. We tape off the room with heavy plastic zip walls from floor to ceiling, cover vents, and run a negative air scrubber when the space allows it. The demo hammer is hooked to a vacuum that catches dust right at the chisel, not just in the air. It is still dusty work, but the containment keeps the rest of the house livable.

Debris piles up fast. Old tile, hardened thinset, and maybe a layer of cement board add up to hundreds of pounds of weight. We shovel it into heavy duty bags and carry it out by hand. Most of the time we load the debris straight into the truck and haul it off the same day. We do not leave a bag pile in your driveway for a week. On a larger tear out, like a whole ground floor of tile, we might stage the haul off over two trips, but the room is left broom clean before we move into prep. If you need a dumpster, we can talk about that on the phone, but for a bathroom, a shower, or a kitchen floor, our truck usually handles the whole load.

Why demo changes the scope of a tile job

Nobody can price prep work they cannot see, and the prep is under the old tile. Until that tile comes up and the thinset is chiseled off, what the substrate looks like is a guess. You might have a slab that needs a light grind and a crack isolation membrane. You might have a wood subfloor that needs a half inch of new plywood screwed down and a decoupling membrane laid over it. Those are two different jobs with different materials and different labor, and they both sit on the same line item called "prep."

That is why we do not publish a flat demolition price on a website. A tub surround removal where the old tile pops off clean is one thing. A kitchen floor where the thinset is epoxy based and chiseling takes twice as long is another. We quote demo and prep together after we talk to you about the room and, when the job is large or complicated, after we come see it in person. You call, we talk through what you are trying to do, and you get a straight quote that covers the tear out, the prep, and whatever the substrate tells us it needs.

Moving from demo into the new tile

Once the slab or wood subfloor is bare and cleaned, the prep work begins, and that prep is what makes the new tile last. For a shower floor, that means sloping dry pack mortar the right way. For a wood subfloor in a laundry room, it might mean a layer of cement board bedded in thinset and screwed off on the manufacturer's spacing. For a slab floor with a crack, it means rolling on a crack isolation membrane that stretches instead of tearing when the slab moves.

The tile material itself does not change how we prep, whether you picked a porcelain from the Temple supply house, a marble mosaic, or a handmade zellige. The substrate under it has to be flat, solid, and dry. How we get there depends on what demo uncovered. The same crew that ran the hammer and shoveled the debris is the crew that will mix the thinset and set the new tile. That means the people who saw the bare substrate with their own eyes are the same people who decide what it needs before tile goes down. If you have a tub surround you want torn out and redone, that work is $2,000 flat for the tile setting labor after demo and prep are handled, and we can walk you through the whole timeline on a call.