Ideas for getting up slate thinset

mbur113

My hubby & I bought a fixer-upper and are now "enjoying" putting in our sweat equity into it The house was built in '71 so when I say there was hideous black slate at the entryway- I'm sure some of you know what I am talking about. We have taken up the slate and are now faced with scraping up the thinset or mastik that was holding it down. It is the texture of concrete and probably that strong! We are on a slab if that makes a difference.

We have an old tile scraper that is beating my husband up- any ideas on anything else to use? We had wonderful results getting up the prefinished hardwood flooring that connects to this area and used a product called Klean-Strip to get the glue up! It practically melted the adhesive and we scraped it right up- but it isn't budging this stuff!!

Any help is appreciated!

Zero Punch

Try a hammer and brick chisel or rent a power chisel.

dougrus

That is thinset mortar...no chemical thats legal would put a dent in it. I have used a hammer and a good wonderbar...it should come up in decent size pieces...like zeropunch said, a power chisel would be best, but if is just a foyer it wouldnt be worth the money...try the wonderbar.

Doug