You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
We have a threadbare old carpet in both bedrooms upstairs. One room the dog sleeps in a lot and I have an office chair in so I'd like to put karndean down as it's easy to clean and hard wearing.
However, we live in an ex mod house. Under the carpet is a grim vinyl flooring that's bonded to the floorboards, I've just torn a few bits up in the cupboard and it leaves lots of the backing and resin still on the boards leaving both a nasty sticky and uneven surface. The vinyl in also at the bottom of the skirting level, so laying above it feels like the wrong thing to do.
So, how do I best proceed if I plan to lay the floor myself?
If deadly is still around his opinion is welcome!
the vinyl flooring lifts with a little heat.
Deadly posted on a thread the other day i think @ him to the thread?
The correct procedure for LVT (Karndean and the like) is to overlay floorboards with minimum 6mm hardwood ply and screw, ring nail or narrow crown staple at 100mm centres, laying the boards with a slight (1mm) gap then use feather compound to fill joints and fixing holes. It’s a lot of work to do correctly.
Maybe consider loose lay LVT rather than glue down?
Thanks @blazin-saddles, definitely thinking loose lay as glue-down seems like harder work.
@joshvegas, heat gun levels of heat? Or is there something that does more area at a time? I'm lazy at DIY!
my experience is that yes heat gun but we're not talking get it roasting. tehres a balance where it soften but hold togetehr so come off in big lumps. When it turns to plasticine you've gone to far.
Last time i did it I had my other half leaning on a shovel and i heated the tiles. ITs pretty grim, the floorboards were knackerd. They were on floorbaords that had shrunk so there were splits, then someone had laid lino over the top which had predictable highlighted all the ridges underneath. so they had laid laminate over the top. If i was in a position to complete the kitchen at teh time I'd just have lifted the boards and replaced with chipboard flooring.
It will depend on what the glue is I guess but I lifted a load of those tiles so I could sand the boards underneath. I found that turps would thin the glue enough that it could be scraped off. Took me hours but I got there in the end.
OP if the vinyl tiles are well bonded and reasonably level I would leave them alone and look at a click LVT product instead. This is installed in the same way as laminate basically.
The only decision you need to make is to take the skirting off and replace on top of the flooring or if you don't want to do this you can fit the flooring up to the skirtings leaving a small movement gap then put a scotia trim over this.
You can get Click LVT with a bonded underlay so you don't even need a separate underlay.
Stick down LVT is not a DIY job IMO.
Might be worth getting the adhesive that bonds the vinyl flooring tested for asbestos before ripping in to it pieces.
Most MOD houses were built in a time and to a scale where asbestos containing glues were possibly used.