My husband & I have a 1930 Vintage English Tudor home.
Most of our bathroom fixtures/ceramic tile floors are orginal and in good condition except for our master bathroom floor.
The tiles are in good condition except the original finish/color has worn off in the main traffic areas.
Does any one have any suggestions or had experience with trying to restore such tiles. I really hate to tear up the floor and replace and I don’t particularly like carpeting in my bathroom.
Thanks!
Replies
In my humble opinion, once the wear surface (glaze) is worn off the tiles, they are pretty much useless and should be replaced. I cannot imagine anything you could do that would be a good fix. Oh, I suppose you could paint with epoxy or something, but what a pain for a probably poor looking and poor quality result. I think fixes would be as difficult and as expensive as tearing out and replacing. You may want to post this at Breaktime--there is a guy there noted for his tile experience who can probably give you a good answer.
I guess I didn't expect to find a good answer, but then you never know. Thanks for your response.
One thing I thought of after I wrote my response was that possibly someone could find matching tile or at least compatable tile and remove just the tile that is worn and replace that.
Ok, since you didn't mention price or level of sweat you're willing to go to restore this, here are some ideas.
Call up some local pottery artist in the area and ask about reglazing old tiles. Since the 'wear' is the lost of the clear glaze or the color glaze layer, it may be possible for the artist to rough up the tile and reapply a glaze it and bake on a new glaze. There is cost for the artist and then there is the timely effort to removed each tile so you can salvage it for reglazing. It's just cheaper to have the artist duplicate (custom made) a batch of the tiles for you to replace and save the time on salvaging.
Or, how about remove/salvaging your floor tiles and relay them with the worn tiles place along the edges or some random pattern away from the traffic area. Note, there is no such luck as a 100% salvaging operation. Expect breakage and have extras on hand. Good luck.