Removing Adhesive | Tile Cleaners

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We were called to this beautiful Victorian house in Nether Edge, Sheffield. The house sits on a tree lined street full of big Victorian homes and dates back to 1898. The current owners were keen to preserve the properties old charm and character and had made quite a few improvements sympathetic to the age of the property. They had begun by removing some tasteless ceramic tiles that had been installed sometime in the 1990’s and were shocked when the original quarry tiled floor was uncovered buried beneath two layers of tile adhesive and a layer of bitumen! They gave us a call and asked us to come and have a look and see if we could restore the floor.

I went to the property and as they had described the floor was in need of some help.
After several test cleans we came to the conclusion that all the damage was repairable, and the floor was able to be rescued. I offered them a quote to complete this restoration work which they gladly accepted. Due to the nature of the work involved the job would take four days to complete.

The client was also having their kitchen re fitted, so we discussed that we could use some of the original tiles that were going to be covered by a new island by lifting them up and storing them until we needed them to patch the holes up and replace the cracked tiles. The owners also managed to source some reclaimed tiles which were also a perfect match.

Cleaning and Restoring a Quarry Tiled Kitchen Floor

We began by removing the old adhesives and bitumen with a combination of Tile Doctor Grout Clean-up with Pro-Clean and assisted with steam, a heat gun and good old-fashioned elbow grease. It was painstaking work but after 2 days we had uncovered the floor.

There were areas of damage, areas with no tiles, patches of loose tiles and areas where tiles had never been, like the two doorways which weren’t original, so tiles were never placed there. We used the rescued tiles and the reclaimed tiles to repair these areas, once the tiles were in you wouldn’t have known any damage had existed. There were many areas of missing grout, so we installed new grout and gave the floor one last wash. As you can see from all the pictures there was a lot to do.

Sealing a Quarry Tiled Kitchen Floor

Once the floor had dried completely we returned to seal the floor, we applied one coat of Tile Doctor Colour Grow, a colour enhancing impregnating sealer which we left to soak in and cure. Then we applied 5 coats of a satin breathable sealer Tile Doctor Seal & Go Extra leaving the floor with a beautiful natural finish.

It was a long job that took four days to completed but the transformation we achieved was well worth the effort. Our clients certainly thought so and were over the moon that an original and unknown part of their house was now restored back to its’ former glory and will hopefully last another 120 years. They even left the following comment on the Tile Doctor feedback system.

”We found a layer of quarry tiles under our kitchen floor – covered in bitumen and tile adhesive. After four days of cleaning, patching gaps & replacing cracked quarry tiles we have a shiny, characterful and ‘new Victorian floor!”