Epoxy over tiles Sunshine Coast

Why coat over tiles instead of removing them

Pulling up a tiled floor is loud, dusty and expensive, and it often damages the slab underneath, which then needs levelling before anything else can go down. If the tiles are well bonded they make a perfectly good base for an epoxy floor. We coat over tiles in garages, laundries, alfresco areas, shop floors and older commercial kitchens.

The finished floor is seamless, so the grout lines that collect dirt and mould are gone, and the surface is easier to clean than tiles ever were.

Checking the tiles first

Before quoting we tap-test the floor for drummy (hollow-sounding) tiles and check for cracks and lifting at the edges. Loose tiles are removed and the void patched level. If more than a small proportion of the floor is drummy we will recommend removal instead, because a coating is only as good as what it is stuck to.

Preparation that makes it stick

Glazed tiles are too smooth for anything to bond to, so the whole floor is diamond ground to remove the glaze and open the surface. Grout lines are filled with a cementitious or epoxy filler and sanded flush so they do not telegraph through the finish. The floor is vacuumed, then primed with a high-adhesion primer designed for tile and dense substrates before the base coat goes down.

This preparation is the difference between a floor that lasts twenty years and one that peels along the grout lines in a year. It is also why we are cautious about coating over tiles where there is moisture in the slab, for example in a laundry with a history of leaks.

Finish options

Either range works over tiles. The Classic Flake Range gives a clean, modern look for laundries, garages and utility rooms. The Stone Flake Range is a better choice where the old tiles were uneven, because the larger hybrid chips disguise minor variations in level that a finer flake can show in raking light.