# Forum Home Renovation Flooring  Slate tiles - crumbling, painting over?

## Creeky

Hi all, I have 1980's-era riven slate tile on a concrete slab - most of the tile is in good condition, just a bit grubby and the pink and green tones aren't working for me. Scrubbing and sealing would fix the grubbiness but probably make the colour worse, so I'm wondering about painting over with a grey paint, to retain the look of slate but smarten it up a bit. Is this viable? What sort of processes/costs are involved? 
Second issue is that there is some crumbling/flaking/softening to some of the tiles down the centre line of the house - my guess is that the slab was poured in 2 halves, or a crack(s) has developed and moisture has wicked through over the years. Can't think of any other explanation, but I'm open to suggestions. Any chance I can just seal/harden these tiles and avoid a major repair job?

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## rebuildr86

oooh i feel for you.
slate is nasty.
it will continue to deteriorate even if painted with a factory floor 2 pack epoxy.
if the tilea are still glued down well, and are not suffering from any major chunks going missing every year, then you may consider having the are levelled with a cement floor leveller and covering it with floating boards or laminate. 
ideally, remove the lot and start again. when i gutted out my slate myself, it was a week of hard work but my god when i got that new floor down, quality of life went up. its so nice to wake up in the morning with a bright floor and not this depressing dark dungeon floor ahaha.

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## Creeky

Thanks mate, it's actually in really good condition on the whole and a perfectly practical surface so I can't justify ripping it out. Even laying a new floor over it is a lot more work and expense than it warrants right now. I actually quite like the rough stone look, it's just the colour that's a bit off (plus the dozen or so tiles that have gone a bit soft). 
2 pack epoxy might be the go? It doesn't seem like it's been sealed in years (if ever), so would a chemical stripping be enough for the epoxy to adhere, or would I still need to sand / grind it?

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## rebuildr86

my fear would be the ability of the slate to hold together under the epoxy.
epoxy is the go, but im just not confident in slate as a sound substrate. paint will hold to it, but i am almost certain that it will just go brittle and cause you to end up with an unrepairable mess.

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## mudbrick

Hang on, Slate is thousands of years old and hard as a rock. It does not just 'go soft' because it's been walked on for 20 years.
if it's crumbling it's more likely because the tiles are coming unstuck and flexing when you walk on them causing the layers to seperate. 
As for the colour I can't help you, some slate colours are really ugly, though I don't mind black slate outside in the sun.

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## Creeky

I think this is probably indian or chinese slate, noted for it's colour more than it's hardness. The 'softness' definitely isn't due to traffic - something has happened to compromise the chemical structure of a handful of slates, pretty much down the centre line of the house. I'm guessing moisture from beneath but I suppose it could be something like acidity or alkalinity coming from somewhere, or the previous owners used the wrong cleaner or had a plastic mat over them for 20 years, I just don't know. Thin flakes come away from them occasionally and I can scrape a crumbly, chalky powder with my fingernail. But they are in the minority and in a pretty low traffic area, so I'm in no hurry to rip up the whole floor to deal with them - especially if I can paint over them with some degree of success. 
One of the things I'm concerned about with painting though is having it look like a garage floor - I guess a darker grey will look more 'slate like' than a lighter one, but is it possible to achieve a ragged/mottled finish with floor epoxy?

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## mudbrick

Maybe you could paint them with 'hammer finish'?  :Wink: 
Agree a painted finish will probably look quite odd, and what happens to the grout lines do you paint over them too?

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## rebuildr86

hard doesnt mean strong, it means rigid. will snap not bend.

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## rebuildr86

where did my entire @@@@ing post just go.
admin this is @@@@
i had talked about my house which suffered slate crumbling and was all perfectly stuck down.

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## phild01

> where did my entire @@@@ing post just go. admin this is @@@@

  Don't know...alphabet heaven!
It's happened to me before but been something I did wrong.

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## Creeky

> where did my entire @@@@ing post just go.

  Ouch, I know how that feels  :Ranting2:     

> Agree a painted finish will probably look quite odd, and what happens to the grout lines do you paint over them too?

  I think I'd just paint it all and let the texture tell the story. If I found the right 'slate' grey I think it could look quite good, but that mid-grey factory floor colour wouldn't look right. 
I just spoke to a helpful chap at Crommelins, he seemed confident that their diamondcoat tintable sealer would work (at least on the good slate), but wasn't sure about my idea of dialing back the quantity of tint to allow some natural colour variation to peek throiugh. Thinking about doing a trial patch in the laundry to test the concept...

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