Removing old ceramic tile

There's a reason they charge that much.

Depending on how much quickest was used its somewhere between a huge pain to impossible unless you have the right tools.

Regardless, expect to have dust in your house for months after you finished sanding off all the adhesive.

It is possible that after the tile is removed, the resining thinset has to be be removed by grinder or sander

This is not a difficult job, just a very tedious one. $4.25/sq ft tile removal is insane enough to make me tackle that job myself. And while you're at it, just lay down the new tile yourself as well.

It's not hard, just time-consuming and very dusty so make sure you block off the rest of your home with plastic sheets and tape to keep the dust confined to one area. Youtube the job and you'll learn very quickly that there's really not much to it.

It'll help to break each tile into smaller pieces with a hammer first. Just be sure not to hit them too hard or you may damage the slab underneath. Once you have the tile broken up it'll be easier to sweep it up and remove the bigger pieces then you'll have a better idea of what you have left to go and chisel out/remove/smooth out. Just be very careful because broken tile is razor sharp. Wear gloves!

$4.25 is not bad at all, $4-6/ sq ft is normal for tile demo. Its fairly often about $5/ sq ft for tile demo, $5 sq ft for new tile and thinset materials, and then $5/ sq ft for laying the new. How big of an area are you talking OP? To rent the proper hammer tool or jackhammer with a thinset blade is going to $120-200. If we are talking like 100 sq ft for a bathroom I'd absolutely pay it.

DON'T break the tile up if they are ceramic, that's wrong. Because many times if the thinset is not done great you can get the entire tile or a huge portion of each tile up all together instead of having 1000 pieces. Once you get some practice you can hammerdrill a corner of the tile and it will often time remove the entire thing.

I rented a jackhammer on a cart with a thinset blade, you gotta get the thinset blade as its got a litte flex to remove the thinset from the concrete. But I rented it to do like 1000 sq ft and it took me pretty much all weekend. Just the tile removal for 1000 sq ft is only like 4 hours but the thinset and clean up is double and triple the work. Not to mention all of the dust clean up.

Just go over the top of it with luxury vinyl

Yep exactly

Most of the thinset should come up with a scraper. You can fill in the divots with self-leveling cement.

If you do use a grinder, get a fan to blow out the dust. It's not only harmful for your lungs, but it will choke you to death

Hammer drill will knock a bathroom out in an afternoon. Wear a dust mask and gloves. Ceramic tile will cut you very easily. I've seen it cut through leather gloves with ease. $4.25 seems very expensive to remove. I've done a bathroom, foyer and kitchen tile removal. I taped the doorways very well with plastic sheets to keep the dust in the room. I removed the old debris out through windows in the room so I wouldn't track through my house. Also had any fans I could find in the windows pulling air outside. I turned my ac off when working and then changed my filters out every week after I was done the job for a month.

I'm doing it right now and using a rotary hammer with a chisel. It's not difficult but it's dusty and time consuming.