I’ve seen several suggestions for painting over plastic tiles, and while I’m not interested in doing that, I do want to remove it from the drywall without damaging the drywall itself any more than absolutely necessary (read: I don’t want to replace the drywall). Does anyone have any suggestions that will remove it without a major demolition? I don’t care about salvaging the tiles themselves, although, I’m up for trying to keep them in re-usable condition for someone else if it’s feasible.

Using a broad knife, say at least 8″ wide, and starting in the middle of the wall, lift up one corner of one tile, then push the broad knife under the tiles while trying not to gouge the drywall. Most installers use five dots of liquid nails to install these tiles, one in each corner and one in the middle. Work down first, all the way to the floor, or the bottom tile, then work up. You will have a bunch of peel spots afterwards, but they can be smooth coated with drywall mud. You may find it necessary to texture the walls if the spots show up as bumps in the wall.

When the tiles are approximately 4×4, do I really want to use a wider blade? I would think I’d only want to do one tile at a time?

Once you try to remove the tile from the wall the paper ( and more) on the drywall will be damaged. You will be best off just cutting out the tile and installing new drywall.

Do you want to paint the drywall afterwards? i wasn’t sure if this was some sort of wall splash that you might be tiling over? If so start tiling and leave the old ones on there!

Yes, I plan to paint the majority of the drywall after I get the tiles off (only exception being the backsplash for the vanity/sink). The tiles come up about 4 feet from the floor on every wall, and while it’s also the backsplash for the sink, I plan to replace that too. These tiles aren’t all stuck so well that they would be able to be tiled over, and that seems like it would stick out a long way from the wall, unless I’m not understanding what you mean…?

That’s What I plan to do too. The people that built my house used 1/4″ plywood instead of drywall and then plastic tiled over it. I’m (eventually) going to rip out the board and replace it with dry wall. Then I bypass the scraping.

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