Have you thought about doing this yourself? It's not easy but it is certainly do-able. Find some strong 18 yr old guys to help you and lots of patience. We ripped up about 600 sf last summer and it was definitely worth doing ourselves. First carefully remove your shoe and base moldings so you can put them back down when you are finished. That's another expense you won't have. Replacing those will add up! You'll need: a trailer or someplace to dump what you've ripped up a bucket for the nails you pull up crowbars and other assorted pull bars, nail extractors hammers several strong college age guys If you need to put down red rosin paper or felt paper, you can very easily do that yourself too. We had our flooring installer put in the new plywood underlayment, (we laid the felt paper)but he didn't charge us as much because he had a nice clean place to start. It was like $1.00 sf.

Hi ya Ed, nothing more to add but one thing, who ever told you to silicone the T&G is completly wrong for a lot of reasons. J.

Didn't tile a bathroom, but did do our kitchen (DIY). One other item to consider is the height of the new tile floor - by the time you add backerboard, thinset/mortar, tile, etc, you're going to gain about an inch or so. That might be an argument for pulling up the existing floor/subfloor. But that isn't necessarily required, if it's sound and you don't mind the (potential) elevation change. Personally, I would pull out the vanity temporarily and tile under it. It can look a little odd to lose part of the bottom of the vanity to tile (this also facilitates installation - a consideration if you're going to DIY). Same thing with a toilet, though you said you were going to replace that. You would remove any molding that touches the floor - quarter round, baseboard, door casing, etc. Label them carefully as you take them off, if you're going to reuse them! LOL Once the new tile is in, dried, grouted, etc, these would get reinstalled (and would likely need cut to a new height/length). Depending on the clearance you have under your doors now, they may or may not need cut down in height. If they're not solid doors (i.e. are hollow-core), there's a definite limit to how far they can be cut down. Depending on how mathematically inclined you are, look into "deflection ratings" for tiles (or ask the flooring forum). That will give you some idea about what type of subfloor, etc, you should be looking into.

I'm not sure what would happen if you were to just slide the washer and dryer into place so that the weight would be more distributed compared to moving them with a dolly with wheels that would concentrate the weight (and thus create a rolling load). If it were me, I'd tend towards waiting the full 72 hours if I could, just to be on the safe side. At the same time, I know you have your own personal household situation. I can imagine many scenarios where waiting 72 hours would be difficult and you would really need to have your washing machine and dryer set up before that waiting period was over (babies using lots of cloth diapers, needing to leave for a trip, impossible to get to a coin-op laundry, etc.) . Might be best to e-mail Forbo tech services people and explain your situation and get their take on it. If you couldn't wait the whole 72 hours and had to slide the washer and dryer into place, would the floor rumple or get indentations? Would the adhesive fail? What, exactly, might happen? What about simply the weight of the washer and dryer, as you asked? What would that do to the floor, leave impressions that matched the bottoms of the washer and dryer? My only personal experience is that I'm thinking of putting marmoleum in my kitchen and was talking with the local dealer about the timing of placing the refrigerator, range and dishwasher in their alcoves after the marmoleum installation. She seemed quite firm about the 72 hour wait. She didn't share any stories of anyone not doing that and causing damage, though, so she may have just been quoting the manual. Maybe your local Forbo dealer would have advice for you, either way. Sorry you had the water damage that sent you off on this project. You're doing great by asking questions; your new floor installation will turn out alright because of your effort. This post was edited by pentimento on Thu, Aug 1, 13 at 19:57