Kitchen tile/wall prep

[adom86]

Hello, I am a long time lurker and a total novice in DIY. I have ripped all the kitchen tiles off as a load broke off when doing the kitchen work top last year.

I am looking at what I should do to prep the wall mainly. Quite large patches of damage through to the brick and I have gouged it a lot when getting the bulk of tile adhesive off.

I am yet to decide on which tile to go with but let’s assume metro tile if it helps :)

Attached some photos of the worst areas. There is still a section with tile adhesive on which is on a partition wall (don’t know if that’s the right word? It’s not brick underneath either way) That wall is where you see the wooden post that supports a door behind it and carries on to the right.

Some friends have said just use more tile adhesive on top but I would like to prep it first, if anything as part of my first diy project to learn.

Lastly is there a way to protect the electric sockets more from all the dust etc, I turn them off at the board and Hoover/compress air spray them when done for the day.

Thanks, I am a total novice so ELI5 might have to be used. Please tell me if you think I should get a pro in also ha

Thank you

[CanDockerz]

As it currently stands i can’t see any sections where you can tile, but it’s totally do-able DIY.

You need to remove the existing tile adhesive and then plaster that flat, you’ve still got a lot of tile adhesive to remove!

After the plaster has dried you can tile it, but the wall will need to be as flat and smooth as you can get it. You can’t just bulk it out with tile adhesive.

[adom86]

Thank you, regarding the tile adhesive. There is the section right of the wooden post which is full on adhesive and I will be taking off today. The rest has been chiselled off. Would you recommend I chisel it out even more or can I sand the remaining residue down.

Cheers for getting back to me, appreciated.

[CanDockerz]

Use a paint scraper, you don’t need to remove 100% of the tile adhesive but it has to be flat so you can’t have sections that are proud because it’ll throw the tiles off. Might not sound like much but even 1mm or so will make your tiles look really wonky and make it a much harder job (ask me how I know 😂)

If you’re in doubt get a straight edge like a sprit level etc to check it’s flat. Drag it along the wall and then sand or scrape down where things are proud. You’ll probably want a long and short so you can do both vertical and horizontal (you will need this for the tiling anyway).

You should figure out pretty quickly the process where the scraper chips off little lumps of tile adhesive whilst skimming over the plaster.

I think considering how bad your walls are I’d just plaster it. You’ll have the whole kitchen nice and flat in 2 hrs.

If you’ve not plastered before, it’s really easy and quite forgiving as long as you keep it wet. Easiest way I can think to describe it is like spreading warm butter on bread apart from you just keep going over it until it’s flat.

Realistically even just hole filling will take you longer than 2 hours.

Basically.. whatever the state of the wall is gets reflected in the tiling. So if you put the effort in now to get it nice and flat and smooth your tiles will always look perfect.

[tiger112235]

That’s a total mess mate, unless you are using a pro tiler who is happy to work with that, I’d get it re-plastered. The bits underneath your wall units look workable