On the garden level, we removed mirrored tiles (70's decor is questionable), then a sheetrocked wall thinking we would find a fireplace. Instead we uncovered the original tiled "kitchen" wall. Assuming kitchens in the late 1800's would have had a cast iron stove heated with wood or coal and needed a fully tiled wall behind them to absorb heat/prevent fire. The kitchen was downstairs, and the food was passed upstairs via the dumbwaiter for formal meals.
We felt like archeologists discovering this wall and were very happy to find it all intact. We decided to remove the tiles and re-use them for the backsplash on the new parlor level kitchen. This turned out to be a VERY dirty project. After 4 hours we had removed most of the tiles successfully and were covered in soot.
The tiles were originally white and we assume made of porcelain. We plan on bleaching them in the bathtub. Any other ideas? Several of the tiles still have a good deal of mortar stuck to them - maybe bleach loosens the mortar? anybody?
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Jun 30, 2008
Saving Tile
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2 comments:
Greg over at The Petch House http://petchhouse.blogspot.com/ has done some ceramic tile recyling, I imagine you'd find those posts would be helpful to you.
A. Nonymous: thanks for the tip! I took a look, and definitely getting some good insight.
Any tile success we have will only be possible because of those who have gone before... ;-)
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