Many products suggest that this can be down. I have seen first hand a Porcelain Tile installed over Sheet Vinyl and got to look at the entire install up close and personal while I was ripping it out! The worst thing - it was down at my Nana's home. Some pirate, some cowboy took advantage of my Nana and charged her over $6,000 to install Porcelain Tile in her kitchen (tile cost $5.50 square foot and the total square footage was 300 square feet). I went after the guy who did this installation and he was not interested in dealing with me and took my suggestion of buying my Nana new tiles and giving her back $2,000.00 dollars so I could buy new cement board and reinstall this floor. In the end my Nana got what she wanted at premium price (still don't no why she didn't call me in the first place???) and I learned a lot about this type of installation. From my findings it's the amount of cushion in the vinyl and that a lot of prep needs to be done to rough up the surface. I have not found one person who has done this with success and when asked by new clients I retell this story and simply tell them I won't install this way - period. Good luck with your remodel! "When it's perfect. It's good enough." - John Whipple

When we put porcelain tile in our washroom we had carpet in there. When I hired the tile layers they said the cost of laying tile did not include removing glue down carpet. They merely put fortified thinset and screwed down underlayment (Hardy cement board I think) on that. They put regular thinset on that and set the tiles. I elected to use epoxy grout because my wife was worried about cleaning grout on that floor. That was about 4 years ago and we have had no problems with the install. I'm not sure if fortified thinset would stick to vinyl but a good tile setter should know.

Wow...what a nasty response. I have had MANY vinyl installations over a few homes over 30 years as a homeowner and I NEVER had my vinyl installed in that way. Furthermore, this was part of our overall home construction so there was no pricing it out separately to us. I told them when we picked it out that it was a temporary choice until we could afford the tile we wanted. You would think a good flooring store would say at that point, well, then you probably don't want our standard install. We should have then be presented with options and allowed to choose whether we wanted to upgrade. However, your entire premise is faulty anyway. I just called two flooring stores in the area after reading your response. One of them actually laughed. He said that they never offer gluing down luan as a cost effective method. They don't want to get angry customers back in their faces when this exact situation happens. It is amazing how you ascribe motivations and know exactly how I would decide. Why don't you spend your energy being helpful instead of wasting time with useless posts.

Thanks for your answers! glennsfc, Sorry I don't know the technical word for that. But with the word "peeling" ceramic, I meant the top coat of the ceramic tile is peeling off in a few spots on the tiles. There're not a lot of those but I just know they're there... I read on this blog that a lady installed vinyl tile on top of the existing ceramic tiles. I wonder if anyone has that experience? The ceramic tiles I have right now is not in extremely bad condition, just a few "peeling" spots, very light color and stained yucky stained grout. http://www.sasinteriors.net/2012/10/installing-groutable-vinyl-tile-lowes/ So I wonder if there's anyway to work this out... with a baby in the house, I don't really want to make a big mess. Plus I don't have a lot of time to do that... :( .