Our house has ugly tile in the kitchen and living room. Only thing good about it is that if mud is tracked in, it’s hard to tell. It blends right in. Same if the dog throws up.

Previous owners musta gotten a deal on it.

When new tile is installed, does the old tile have to be broken up and removed or can new tile be laid on top? The threshold heights and transitions don’t appear to be a problem.

I don’t want to pay for removal if is not required. I will if it’s nessesary.

Yes remove it, the only way, IMO.

What kind of tile?

Vinyl and you may be able to go over it.

Ceramic, porcelain and such types you will need to remove them.

I would remove it. It is a job believe me. Not as bad as busting concrete to break up a garage floor, but close. I would hire it out.

As others have noted, if its ceramic tile, remove it first. And depending upon how it was initially installed, removing it may be the most labor intensive part of your re-tile.

Depot rents concrete sanders. Pull up the old tile and the sander to smooth out the surface.

Crappy messy job but it has to come up.
If you have a decent sized air compressor this will make it pretty quick getting it up.
https://m.harborfreight.com/ai...r-scraper-62687.html

Clean up will take awhile.

Thanks for your responses! It’s ceramic tile. I’m too old and decrepit to do it myself. I’ll have to hire it out. Not including new tile material cost, how much percent wise of the total labor including new tile installation will the old tile removal be? Any ideas?

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Thanks for your responses! It’s ceramic tile. I’m too old and decrepit to do it myself. I’ll have to hire it out. Not including new tile material cost, how much percent wise of the total labor including new tile installation will the old tile removal be? Any ideas?

It will be more than you want to pay. It is a semi skilled job, so I would get several bids. Cost depends on square foot and time it takes plus the cost to rent a compressor. Make sure it includes cleanup and haul away. It is a messy job.

We just paid $3/sqft to have tile installed. We did all of the demo work. No idea what that would have cost.

I ended up renting an electric jack hammer and used a wide spade bit to remove ceramic tile. There was no way to do it by hand, it was a pain to remove and I only had about 70 square feet to remove. If you are removing it yourself it would be worth renting one. Of course I’ve known people who used hand tools to remove theirs but I guess it varies by how well it’s attached.

As has been noted, the old tile needs to come up. Now the real big deal is you need a good 'foundation' to install any new tile... so what is under this might need to come up and be replaced too. Tile needs to go down on a solid smooth base.

Underneath the old tile is a concrete foundation.I would assume that it would have been leveled by filling in the high spots with the standard leveling substance used for tile. Hopefully, it won’t need further leveling. I suppose the removal process might bung up the old concrete surface.