Cracked ceramic floor tile

[The Grebe]

We just had the tile installed in our bathroom and a twerp we had over dropped a sharp heavy object that he shouldn't have had in there in the first place and it chipped a 12" x 12" floor tile. Upon closer inspection, the tile is cracked in 3 places....any advice on how to replace it?

[Marbleye'd]

I'm not a flooring guy. But You have to break out the bad tile and grout around it scrape the subfloor as clean as you can and glue down new tile and regrout. The flooring department in whichever store you go to will try to help you if you ask them.

[The Grebe]

Yeah,that would be the obvious way of doing it, but maybe someone out there with some tile experience knows an exact way. I don't want to dig into it before I know what to expect?

Maybe it's not that hard of a deal, but since I'm not a dyed in the wool tile setter, I don't know that for sure? Certainly not a pro, homemade all the way.

[Farmboy1]

Get a grinder or scraper and remove all the grout around the tile. Get this removed as well as you possibly can. Take a hammer and smack the broken tile and break it into as many pieces are you can. Remove the tile in as many pieces as necessary. Don't use any of the surrounding tiles to pry against because you will then be replacing 2 tiles.

Once you have the tile removed, you will have to see how the substrate looks and see if you need to grind/chip away the thin set so you have something to put the new tile to. Install the thin set, wait for it to dry, and then grout.

It is not a big job, but you can figure it will take at least 2 days to finish while you wait for stuff to dry.

[The Grebe]

Thank you, that pretty well sums it up I guess? No hidden secrets that will jump up and bite me.

[The Grebe]

The tile replacement is a done deal....Busted out cracked tile with claws on framing hammer, being careful not to get to aggressive and mess up the gray board underneath.

Used claws to get most of the ceenter out and not lever on surrounding tile. Used chisels to get out remaining tile pieces. Kept it cleaned out and vaccumed up.

Used chisel to remove surrounding grout. Cleaned and vaccumed out work area and got it down to the gray board underneath. Thin coated replacement tile, inserted and lined it up. Rather then waiting to grout, since there was only one piece, did the grouting today also. Looks pretty good, matches better then the original tile, with the flow of the other tiles.

placed the little plastic waste bucket on it so we don't step there and we we should be good to go in a few days!