Replacing Salito Tile With Hardwood

Q: I have Salito flooring and I would love to have hard wood flooring installed in the entire house. My question is do I need to remove this floor and if I do what is the best way to do it. The House is about 2000 square feet and the tile is all over …please help me resolve this issue.
Thank you
A: You will want to remove all of the tile before installing any new wood flooring in your home. Let’s do a quick step by step for how to remove tile:
The most important part of this will be determining if you want to save the tile or not. If you want to save the tile, you will need to use a rotary tool to cut the grout around the outside of the tile. Then, carefully use a pry bar to remove the tile. Depending on long the tile has been in place and how well it was installed can make this very difficult.
Now if you do NOT want to save the tile, this gets much easier. All you will need to do is break up the tile using a hammer. I would suggest placing a towel over the tile to prevent any chunks of tile from flying around as you break up the tile. Remove the tile in sections as you break it up.
Once all of the tile is removed, you will need to scrape the floor to remove adhesive/mortar. You could use a hand scraper, but honestly for the amount of tile in your home I would suggest renting a power scraper from a local home store. Typically these machines run about $50 to $75 for a day and they make the work a breeze compared to hand scraping. One thing I will note here is that these machines are very loud, so use some ear plugs.
After the subfloor has been scraped, its likely that you will have a few spots here any there that will need leveling because small amounts of the subfloor come up or get gouged into. So make sure you take time to level out your subfloor and get it clean before installing your floor.
From here, go ahead and install your floor. Assuming this is going over concrete you can either float the floor (make sure to use a moisture barrier and good underlayment) or glue the floor in place. If the floor is being glued, take extra caution during the leveling process to get your subfloor as flat and smooth as possible.
As a final note, when removing tile I would suggest wearing proper eye protection because some bits may fly around, also gloves and knee pads are a good idea. When scraping, a dust mask and ear plugs is also suggested.