Old Quarry Tiles

Have you discovered old quarry tiles in your period property?

Find out what I chose to do with mine...

The living room floor of this Victorian house had been raised by a 10cm concrete slab. As the next door underfloor cupboard has an original slate slab floor, I suspected there might be slate under the slab. Using a chisel drill, I dug down through the slab in three places and found the original floor, which I assumed was also slate. However, when my builder removed all of the slab, we uncovered black and red quarry tiles. This was a disappointment as they're not to my taste and not in great condition having lost their surface and become quite badly chipped.

Old Quarry Tiles 

Those are the offending tiles and, to the right, is the back of the living room where the underfloor heating pipes will run in a concrete slab to the dining room, which now has a new slab. 

I could have had the living room and dining room floors completely dug out and replaced with Kingspan, underfloor heating and a concrete slab, just as I've had done in the kitchen. However, I wanted the living room to be different as it will have an open fire and it also has no windows. I also wanted a portion of my ground floor to be breathable. As the walls in period property generally do not have damp proof courses in them, moisture can rise up them if it can't escape through the floor.

Old Quarry Tiles 

As I didn't like the old quarry tiles but did want the majority of the living room floor to be breathable, I either needed to replace the tiles with another type of stone or cover them with something else. I considered covering them with a breathable and permeable epoxy resin but I didn't want to risk creating one massive cleanup task should it not adhere to my damp tiles. I considered laying sliced pebble mosaic using a lime based mortar and grout, but it would have been expensive and there was no guarantee the pebbles would remain fixed forever. Normal floor tiles would pop off in time due to not being breathable and moisture rising up through the quarry tiles. 

So, I looked at replacing the tiles with another breathable material. Natural stone was the obvious choice but it would have had to have covered the entire living room and dining room to have looked right, and it would have cost a few thousand pounds. Forget that.....this is House Fairynot the Fairy Godmother!

Back to the pebble idea I went, but found nice river pebbles were very expensive....£27 per 25kg bag for green Japanese pebbles! I knew they would look good bedded flat side up into lime mortar, they would be breathable and I would be able to create a cobbled floor in the middle of the living room and have a tiled border. But the cost!

Green River Pebbles 

Low and behold, I found a one tonne bag of unwanted green river pebbles for sale for £80! I'm now awaiting their delivery and dreading getting started on creating this very risky cobbled floor. I have never done it before and just hope I have made the right decision.

Watch this space!