Cement Tiles

I wrote yesterday about having to remove the plinth in our salon before the builders arrive.

The tiles in the salon are one of the things we really liked about the house when we first looked at it. They are cement tiles, very fashionable in the first half of the 20th century. The pattern layer is about 6mm thick, with a plain cement backing. They are often confused (especially by us, who were convinced) with encaustic tiles which are glazed clay tiles with a deep embedded pattern and fired in a kiln. Cement tiles are much more durable and don't need firing 

The tiles are made by forming a pattern in a metal mold with mineral pigments in Portland cement. A thick layer of ordinary cement and sand is laid over that, and the whole is compressed at very high pressure. Our tiles were made by a company called B&C in Tours. I have managed to find out nothing about them.

We weren't looking forwards to removing the plinth as we had been told the tiles were the very devil to remove because they are laid on a surface with cement. Luckily (or unluckily) our plinth was cemented directly to soft(ish) limestone, so came away easily. What might not be so easy is removing the cement used to mount the tiles from the cement of the tiles themselves.

The red lines show the thickness of the tile - between the yellow lines is the pattern layer and the blue lines the backing cement. The white lines show the cement used to mount the tile, which has to be removed

We managed to remove about 60% of the plinth tiles unbroken, plenty enough for the feature band we want to reinstall. The floor tiles themselves are remaining in place, to be thoroughly cleaned.