cracked tile repair

[JoeMik]

Sorry, only my second post and it's another quick one. I want to repair some cracked tiles before we put our house on the market.

The substrate is a slab-on-grade concrete "foundation". As you can see in the atttached picture, the cracked tiles seem to follow a diagonal line across the entryway. I suspect there's a settlement crack in the concrete under them. There are other tiles that were replaced before we moved in four years ago. These follow that same line. Yesterday I saw a link for a guide to replacing tiles, but can't find it now. Any advice for a newbie trying to do this himself?

Also, the new tiles will have a more shiny finish than the existing ones. Any suggestions how I might artificially "weather" the new tiles so they more closely match the existing ones? Someone once suggested using steel wool on them, but I never felt comfortable enough to try it.

Thanks,
-jm

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[stefan]

hi jm
it is called a stress crack
you can cut the groutline with a grinder and then take a hammer hit the tile it will come of easy and replace the tile
you will see the fixed tile and the grout maybe a different color or shade

[Rd Tile]

Put an area rug over the cracked tile when potential buyers come over. :idea:

[stefan]

that is better then fixing it and faster
and I dont buy that house so who c........

[JoeMik]

Following up on my original posts from a few weeks ago...

Because we had already moved out, we decided to replace the cracked tiles prior to showing it. Figured having an area rug or two randomly placed might be a little suspicious.

As expected, there was a crack in the slab under the tiles which followed exactly the same line as the cracked tiles.

The new grout looked a little darker than the original, but it was still better than the cracks.

The house sold for $16k (7%) over list price - it was worth the afternoon of work.

I do have some follow-up questions RE post-tension slabs now, but I'll post those in a different thread if I find that they're not already answered. Thanks everyone for your help!

-jm