The previous owner of my house tiled all the bedrooms on the second floor. I would like to remove all the tile and lay down hardwood flooring. So far I have removed the tile and now have all the thin set underneath. My question is whether it needs to be completely removed with a grinder or if we can use a very thin layer of self leveling cement to fill in all the grooves and make a level surface on which to lay the hardwood flooring? On the first floor there is a concrete slab and I used an industrial concrete grinder to remove all the thinnest. That worked great but I am concerned that this type of machine will just rip through the subfloor. And the idea of grinding off all the thinnest with a hand grinder seems like it will take forever. Any suggestions on the self leveling compound and if so which product would be recommended? Thank you
Concrete – use self leveling compound to level old thin set over plywood subfloor
floorself-leveling-concretesubfloortile
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Yeah not sure I share their opinion. I did it 5 or 6 years ago and everything is still good. Just make sure that you use long enough screws in the area with the dip to hit the subfloor.
Check the manufacturer's specs on the thinset you are using (or just call their tech support to verify).
Generally, if the variation in the floor is 1/4" or more then using your thinset mortar is usually not recommended for fixing it.
Even though you say it is 3/16", in my opinion, it would make life easier to just use an SLC
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Best Answer
Yes you must remove all of the thinset - FOR SURE. Thinset is not meant to be exposed and a leveler on top of it will not protect it enough. From walking and moving furniture you will end up with chunks of thinset/leveler and it will just be a mess.
You either have backer board or plywood under the thinset. You have would really grind off thinset in this scenario but you can:
pry up the first layer of subfloor and redo it.
try to hit it with a heavy scraper.
and what I would try first... pound it out. Most thinset will disengage with heavy vibration. Try a hammer or mallet on a small area. Strike the thinset repetitively pretty hard in a circle pattern. See if you get some chunks disengaging after the first few minutes. If this works it get much easier after you start.