Strip Out Demolition
Internal strip-out demolition for renovations — walls, floors, fixtures and fit-out removed down to a clean shell, ready for your trades.
Learn more →What does floor and tile removal cover?
Every common floor covering in Perth homes and businesses: ceramic and porcelain tiles, the sand-cement bed under them, timber and engineered boards, floating floors, carpet and underlay, vinyl and cork — removed down to the concrete slab or timber subfloor, with the adhesive dealt with, not left as a lumpy surprise for your installer.
That last part is the actual job. Remove bathroom tiles or lift old boards and you are perhaps a third done; what the new flooring needs is a flat, sound, clean substrate, and most of the labour goes into getting from "coverings up" to that.
How are tiles removed from a concrete slab?
With electric demolition hammers fitted with tile chisels, working across the floor in runs, then grinding the remaining adhesive or bed off with dust-extracted floor grinders. Older Perth homes — the brick-and-tile stock across Morley, Midland and Victoria Park — usually have tiles on a 20 to 40 mm sand-cement bed, which comes out with the tiles and adds real tonnage: a 50 square metre tiled area on a bed can put well over 2 tonnes of rubble in the skip. Newer homes with tiles glued direct to the slab strip faster but need more grinding.
Silica dust is the hazard here, and it is managed, not shrugged at: barriers up, extraction on the tools, and the slab vacuumed rather than swept at the end. Grinding tile bed dry with no extraction is the kind of shortcut that should make you show a contractor the door.
What about vinyl and sheet flooring in older homes?
Stop and check the age first. Vinyl sheet, vinyl tiles and their black bitumen adhesives from before 1990 can contain asbestos, and so can old underlay sheeting. If the house or shop predates 1990 and the vinyl's history is unknown, a sample goes to a lab before anyone lifts it. Removal of more than 10 square metres of non-friable asbestos-containing material must, under WA law, be done by a licensed asbestos removalist — that stage runs separately, documented, before general floor removal continues. It adds days and cost, and it is not optional.
What surface are you left with?
Whatever the next trade needs, agreed before work starts:
- For tiling — slab stripped and ground flat enough to tile, high spots taken down.
- For timber or laminate — bed and adhesive off, slab ready for the installer's moisture testing and levelling.
- For polished concrete — coverings and adhesive off, with the grinding contractor taking over the surface from there.
- Timber subfloors — coverings and fixings out, damaged sheets flagged, floor swept and ready for the carpenter.
Floor removal is often one line in a bigger renovation — it pairs naturally with a kitchen or bathroom strip, and whole-house flooring jobs fold into a full strip out demolition so the bins, dust control and program run as one job instead of three.
How long does it take?
A carpeted 3-bedroom home can be lifted in a day. Tiles on a bed across a kitchen and living area typically run 2 to 3 days including grinding and clean-up. Fixed timeframes and a fixed price come with the quote — typical Perth cost ranges are on the Pricing page.
Anywhere in the Perth metro area, Scarborough to Canning Vale: call (08) 6171 2654 with the room sizes and what is on the floor now.
More services
Explore our other services
Bathroom Demolition
Full bathroom strip-out — tiles, tubs, vanities and fixtures removed and cleared, ready for the reno to start.
Learn more →Kitchen Demolition
Cabinetry, benchtops, splashbacks and appliances stripped out and removed, leaving a clear space for the new kitchen fit-out.
Learn more →Office Strip Outs
Commercial office strip-outs — partitions, ceilings, flooring and fit-out cleared for lease make-good or refurbishment.
Learn more →Internal Wall Removal
Removal of internal stud and masonry walls to open up a floor plan, with debris cleared from site.
Learn more →
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
How much dust does tile removal make, and how is it controlled?
A lot, if it is done carelessly — tile, sand-cement bed and adhesive grinding all produce fine dust, and grinding masonry products releases respirable crystalline silica, which WA's WHS regulations require to be controlled. Control means sealing off the work area with dust barriers, extraction on the grinders, and a proper clean rather than a quick sweep. If you are living in the house during the work, say so at the quote stage — the containment plan changes when the family is staying in.
Can floorboards be lifted without destroying them?
Sometimes. Genuine jarrah boards in older Perth homes have salvage value and can often be lifted intact if they were nailed rather than glued — tell us before the job if you want them saved, because salvage lifting is slower and is quoted differently to removal. Glued-down engineered boards and floating floors rarely survive lifting. Secret-nailed boards over joists are the best salvage candidates; anything over a glue bed is usually a write-off.
What does floor removal cost in Perth?
It is priced by area, covering type and what is under it. Carpet is quick and cheap to lift; vinyl over ply is moderate; tiles on a thick sand-cement bed are the heavy end because of the weight and the grinding that follows. Access matters too — a ground-floor slab with a driveway for the skip bin prices differently to a third-floor apartment. Every job gets a fixed written quote after measuring up, and typical Perth per-room ranges are on our Pricing page.
Free, no-obligation