Just pulled up the lino in the kitchen in our new house to replace it with tiles or laminate and there are a few very uneven parts where holes have been cut in the old tiles and patched with cement very poorly. This has left a few raised rectangular areas around 5-6mm higher than the tiles and around 30cm long and 10cm wide. I don’t really want to hack at the cement with a chisel n case it is covering something I could damage.

Would levelling compound then a thick layer of tile adhesive or laying a thick underlay and laminate be better? We would be happy with either type of flooring so what would be the cheapest/easiest to do?

levelling compound is great and very easy to do. Did our kitchen mainly to level out the bits of adhesive from the old tiles that I couldn’t get off easily.

I then used the foil-backed underlay and put laminate flooring on top. All worked a treat.

Get them hacked away, not a big job, self levelling compound is a bloody big sticking plaster for a small issue.

Other option is to diamond grind them away with a cup wheel on a grinder. Surprisingly delicate but will remove the excess and you can use it to remove any old lumps etc.

Using levelling compound for fairly deep holes gets expensive quickly.

I’d knock the tiles and adhesive up then level if needed afterwards, I’ve obviously not seen the job though. Hire an sds breaker to make it easier.

I had a similar scenario recently. Depending on the age of your house, some old tiles have asbestos in, as does some of the mastic that is used to stick tiles to the cement/screed. As such, grinding stuff with asbestos in is not advised. It’s very cheap to do a test if you are concerned.

Pic of tiles and cement ‘bodge’ job…. not got a clue why the hole was there… Tiles look old enough to have asbestos, how do I tell?

Grinder and diamond cup wheel should do the job?

That’s Terrazo, it’s usually about 20mm thick and laid into wet screed as the ‘adhesive’. They generally come up ok and easily to leave a decent tiling surface but sometimes the screed can be completely knackered. Most modern tiles will only be 10mm max though so you need to think about how to sort around the skirtings etc, as they’d be a gap.

If they’re sound and we’ll stuck down, I’d probably be tempted to leave them be and tile over, if loose then they’ll have to come up if you want to re-tile.

It’s usually only the vinyl style tiles than contain asbestos, not stone types.

Yup, they look nothing like the asbestos tiles that I had (however certainly no expert), as Blazing Saddles said it’s the vinyl type. If you do a google search for vinyl asbestos tiles, there’s plenty of examples.

They are sound and well stuck down the only issue is where they have made repairs as above. Will a bolster chisel and some time do the trick or an angle grinder and diamond cup work better?