Renovation of the Rear of the House

The rear of the house isn't a structural part of the house.  The original  cottage had only four rooms: two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen, all under a main roof and on the perimeter of the foundation of the house.  From the rear wall a flat roof was pitched under which was an open porch with a concrete floor and a door to the left leading into the laundry and doors to the right leading into the separate bath and toilet.  I moved the laundry door to the back wall of the house and consolidated the bath and toilet and removed the toilet door.  In time I paneled the porch in jarrah, laid tiles over the concrete floors of both the porch and bath, and renovated the entire bathroom.

These two areas represent the last phase of the renovation of the cottage.  I have been reluctant to face this because of the effort that it will require, but I know that I must resist the impulse to settle down comfortably with what I've got.  It's basically now or never, so I've decided to deal with it.

There are issues with the the bathroom renovation, in which Paul has been of great assistance with his building skills and expertise.  I am familiar with building in the 70's and 80's, and since then there has been a revolution in materials, techniques, and tools that I'm only dimly aware of and in which Paul is an expert.

But the fundamental issue has been the floor. 

I laid the floor tiles over the original concrete floors.  The porch floor already had cracks in it but I figured that by 1980 it had settled down after almost 30 since the house had been built (1950).

In about 1990 I noticed the first hairline cracks in the porch tiling.  I returned from the circumnavigation in 2013 to find that the cracks had opened to 5 mm in places.  This represented a quantum jump from the state in 2008 when I had departed, and I attributed much of it to the fact that a machine must have been used to dig a ditch along the side of the house for the new septic system that had been installed during my absence.  I figure that the machine would have caused a lot of ground vibration and worse, the soil would not have been tightly packed after the pipe had been laid.

The cracking looked bad but then I realized that it represented more than 35 years of expansion.  A gap of 5 mm represents by my calculation an expansion rate of 1/7 mm per annum. 

The question was what to do about it.  Options ranged from jack hammering out all of the concrete and doing a fresh pour using plenty of steel reinforcement, to covering the floor with an indoor-outdoor carpet.

I quickly ruled out a complete re-pour aswildly impractical: jack hammering the entire floor would shake the house causing unpredictable damage and pouring the new floor would involve a major effort with concrete trucks and cement pumps. 

I eliminated snap-on "wood" flooring.  The professionals were not interested in doing the job and I learned enough to realize that the existing floor too rough and uneven to tolerate veneer flooring. 

Eventually we all agreed that tiled flooring was the only way to go. 

Cracked tiles before start of work

I contacted a builder to see what he could offer.  After I explained the problem he told me that an engineering plan would have to be lodged with the shire.  The thought of the shire sticking its nose into my renovation effort put me right off and besides, I figured that a proper engineering solution would be to pour a new floor on pylons down to the bedrock.  This would be all out of proportion to my requirements.

Underlying crack on concrete floor

Dust extractor and hammer drill

After weeks of speculating about what was under those tiles I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and commit myself.  In one day I removed a short line of tiles by hand using a gimpy hammer and bolster chisel.  I was relieved to see that the original concrete floor was intact and very strong.  I even recognized the original green paint of the floor.  The work was hard on my hands and shoulders but nevertheless I sent photos to Paul and described the project as do-able.  Paul knew better.  That weekend he set me up with a heavy hammer drill with an angled spade bit for hammering my way under the tiles.  He also loaned me a dust extractor.

The work was even harder on my arms, noisy, and very dusty, but once I got the hang of it I was able to work faster and get neater results than with the manual method.  Nevertheless it was still very difficult. The fundamental problem is that I, the amateur builder, had laid the tiles on a super strong cement base that has been extremely difficult to chip away. 

Fortunately I had adopted the strategy of removing tiles along the existing cracks, and I came to the decision that rather than trying to replace all of the tiles I would replace the minimal number of tiles, along the fracture lines.  I would do it in such a way that I could easily remove  and replace them when future cracks became intolerable.  To this end I would keep plenty of spare tiles on hand.  Miles had given me the valuable information that modern tiling glue can be built up to even the floor and better yet, retains some elasticity to cope with minor floor movement.

Line of tiles along right side and across top to be removed

Most of existing tiles will be left intact

Yesterday I visited a large flooring place in Fremantle with a sample of the 4"x8" tiles that I would be replacing.  The woman at the counter asked "Can I help you?" to which I replied "I don't think so, but I'll give it a shot."  I asked her if she had tiles similar to the sample I had in my hand.  She commented that it was a "Quarry" tile that she had not seen in years.  I told her that I had laid the tiles in the late 70's and she nodded in agreement.  This woman knew her stuff.

She told me that there is one place in town that carries discontinued tiles but even if they carry quarry tiles, they would cost about $10 per tile, making it an impractically expensive proposition for the scale of my patch up effort. 

The business did not carry any 4" x 8" tiles.  Fortunately I had laid the tiles in a pattern that allowed the replacement of pairs of tiles by one 8" x 8" tile, and fortunately again they carried plenty of 200mm x 200mm tiles, which are slightly smaller but will fit comfortably with generous grouting.  Unfortunately it is impossible to match the color but at least I have a way out. My question now is whether to attempt to disguise the new tiles by using a similar color or accentuate the change by using a contrasting color. 

Sample tile tried for size

Will the solution be perfect?  Nope, but we're talking about a roughly tiled semi outdoor area and not a gleaming and precise indoor area.  Besides, it seems downright immoral to chip away those super strong tiles.