cool!! hopefully i won't have to use your advice for a while though :)

lisa

I really couldn't control the chisel from dipping if I hit it at just slightly the wrong angle

So what if you wailed your hand!! That's why God gave you TWO!!

:-)

(Could be worse-- my stepson hears it from me all the time!)

After hitting my hand more than once with the hammer on our last bath remodel, I quickly went and bought a chisel that had a round piece on the top to protect my hand. However, I wasn't worried about protecting any heating wires, so I quickly moved into using a large heavy scraper that resembles a shovel or ice scraper.

Thanks for your concern, Bill :) This project has basically left me with one good hand, and it's not my dominant one, unfortunately. My hat's off to folks who can sustain a multi-year career in this and not amputate their limbs or grind themselves into carpal tunnel/worse within a matter of months.

barreg, imagine the fun you could have had if you just whacked the tiles with a hammer! :) (the canals were necessary, though--I tried it before canals and the porcelain just absorbed the blows)

Hey, flyleft, what's an "RO" sander? I have some tile to remove someday.

Can you post some pics? I still owe a friend some help replacing a tile (no wire). Any tips for clean grout removal? Did you cut canals in the tile, grout or both?

clg, I'm sorry--I meant a random orbit sander. We have one that is one of my best remodeling friends :) I used some 60 paper on it to sand down thinset bit by bit to get to the wires. You'll want to have a shopvac handy, the windows open, and to wash your hair after you're done, unless you like the statuary coiffure look :) (kind of fun to play with before you shower, though :))

weedyacres, I had *planned* to remove the grout with a dremel, but there were some coping saw blades lying around and I picked one up to do something else and found myself using them on the grout, just fine. The tiles are 8.5x17, so I had 17" groutlines to slice away into. Then I cut canals in the tile with a 4.5" angle grinder, another one of my remodeling best friends (although I have a love/hate relationship with it at this point). Not all the way through, just most of the way down. When I whacked the tile with the hammer, the tile (very hard throughbody porcelain) just cracked up, not necessarily along the canals specifically, but much more than it had pre-canal. YOu really want to make sure you do the groutlines before you whack, though, so the impact doesn't transfer over to any neighboring tiles you want to keep in.

And, please, what heating wires? Are they for an in-floor heating mat?

Thanks, thanks!

. . . actually, I guess what I want is a link to the thread that obviously proceeded this one! Thanks!

Use about a 1 inch chisel and hold it at a shallow angle directed at the bottom edge of the tile Put the tip right into the corner).
Tap with a dead blow hammer and the tile should pop off.
If you have some tougher tiles a 2 pound drilling hammer will almost always pop then loose.
Hitting harder is NOT the answer, it will sends shards all over and can crack the tile bed.

happykate, the thread before this was, um, "just shoot me"...

And brickeyee, I daresay that your conception of hitting hard is probably different from mine :) Shards didn't fly--maybe little tiny pieces. And the tile didn't pop off, no way, when I was using a chisel on the edges--might be because of the size? 8.5x17? And I had gotten pretty thorough coverage. If the tile had popped off with a tap with a hammer, I wouldn't have had the situation I had...

But then again, I'm just writing about my specific experience, with big very well adhered tiles, and a chick doing the hammer-wielding. It was good for me :) but I don't know if a stronger person would actually do damage to the substrate.