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Hey all
After following the STW common accepted wisdom of DIY Kitchens being the go to option for a kitchen units, I'm now back for a bit more advice on flooring.
We are looking to redo our kitchen floor - we currently have an open plan kitchen dinner with 60sqm of flooring.
The room is south facing with bi-folds that get a lot of light (and heat in recent days!)
The previous owners installed porcelain tiles which have cracked due to the floor in the original part of the house being badly prepared.
Rather than lift these we are considering flooring over the top of the tiles and have settled on LVT flooring - most likely Quickstep.
Initially I'd thought we could go lay the LVT directly on to the tile after priming, but I'm worried that the existing tiles will begin to show through over time.
In terms of both the longevity of the floor and speed to lay the floor - I'm wondering whether I should self level or I could get away with 6mm ply and lay the lvt on top?
I'm guessing I also need to think about the right sort of adhesive given the heat in the room.
Any advice greatly appreciated.
Firstly LVT of the quickstep variety isn't glued down, it's a floating floor.
Fixing 6mm ply down will be very time consuming and not great fixing down into porcelain tiles - ply will need fixing every 300mm minimum.
Most effective way would be to "self level it" if you don't you will eventually see the grout lines show through on the LVT.
However, cracked tiles on a floor mean there is a construction problem underneath that may not be wise to lay more floor on top of.
Cracked tiles normally result from poorly constructed timber joist floors- timber flexys and tiles don't so they crack instead.
LVT is only a couple of mm thick and quick pliable so it will show imperfections - such as grout lines.
TBH you should really remove the old tiles then apply a self leveling compound (maybe 2 or 3 times) to get the best finish before putting down the LVT.
60m².... Big job and shouldn't be expected to be a cheap one either.
Perfectly fine to lay glue down LVT over tile, but it needs to be sound, clean, primed and skimmed with latex levelling before, just as any floor that LVT is going over. You can’t just stick LVT to the tiles. You can’t cover with ply either as ply should be mechanically fixed at specified intervals and then thenjoints feathered and skimmed before LVT.
As mentioned above, your floor fails the 1st test and cracking suggests movement or loose porcelain tile.
I’d probably suggest a floating LVT variant for your scenario, unless you want to start uplifting porcelain to find out how ‘loose’ it is.