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In many homes, there are many areas with ceramic tile. Perhaps it’s your shower area, your bathroom sink or floors. It could be your kitchen counters, your kitchen floors, your backsplash, or even your entryway. Ceramic tiles are beautiful and cost efficient. But what do you do when your beautifully tiled area has one broken tile? Don’t worry, this is a VERY easy fix. Here is an easy article on how to replace your broken tile.

Materials/Tools Needed:

Grout Saw

Latex Tile Adhesive

Hammer

Chisel

Spatula for applying adhesive

Trowel/Spatula for applying Grout

Sponge

Matching replacement tile

Matching grout

The first thing you will need to do is grab your grout saw. Saw through the tile around all four sides of the tile. This should be fairly easy, but try not to cut into the grout surrounding other tiles.

Next, you will need to break up the tile. You can do this by placing a chisel on top of the tile and hitting the end of the chisel with your hammer. Once it’s broken, use your same chisel to get under the tile and remove it. Also, use this chisel to remove all of the adhesive that is below it. Make sure that you get up all of this adhesive. If there are pieces left behind it could effect the new tile, making it uneven with the others.

Once your old tile and old adhesive is up, you will need to get your new tile. Hopefully, you have some extras laying around from when the tiles were first laid. If not, you’ll have to replace with the closest match you can find at the store or on the internet. I’ve also seen some people get creative, creating a new pattern if they don’t have matching tiles. For example, if all of the tiles are a light color of blue but you don’t have and cannot find an exact match, then you can replace that tile, and every third tile after it, with a dark blue.

Now, you will need to spread the latex tile adhesive onto the back of this replacement tile with a spatula, trying your best to get it evenly spread out. Place the tile down into the gap you’ve created where it will go.

Lastly, spread your grout into the joints around the tile, removing any excess with a damp sponge. Again, you want this grout to match the rest of the grout as closely as possible. However, often there will be a bit of a difference as the older grout will have changed slightly in color with age. There’s nothing that can really be done about this, but the difference will fade over time.