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new vinyl over cracking old vinyl?

16 years ago

We need to replace our kitchen floor which is cheap vinyl tile. We have a galley style kitchen and the tile area between the dishwasher and fridge is starting to buckle. When I knock on some of them they sound hollow and are wavy. Tiles are not wet- so I don't suspect a leak from the dishwasher or the frige.

One tile was cracking so I pried up some and it broke apart, and I discovered that there are in fact 3 layers of vinyl. House is 35 years old.

A neighbor told me the previous owners installed the current top layer of vinyl 4-5 years ago.

We want to replace with either vinyl sheet or DIY vinyl tile. We are on a concrete slab.

Should I peel off the buckling tiles and level only that area with a leveling product?

Or should I remove all tiles plus other layers and start from scratch?

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Comment (1)

steve_o
16 years ago
Assuming none of the vinyl or adhesives contain asbestos, The Right Way (TM) is to pull up all the old vinyl and start over. If you suspect asbestos, you could remove layers except for the asbestos, and level what's left. Leveling after removing buckled tiles is a non-starter, IMHO, because it sounds like the adhesive has given up and it will only happen with other tiles beyond the ones you remove.
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I would peel up whatever vinyl sheets are there. Then scrape the rest with a scraper. Tile needs a good substrate or the tile could crack, your grout break up, or tiles become loose. I would use something like Schluter-DITRA (Mike Holmes uses it constantly) orange waffle. I used a blue mat I found in the tile section of HD. It's intended to quiet tile for upstairs flooring, but it had a sticky tar like backing that made it ideal for laying over old laminate that wouldn't come up. Here is a link that might be useful: Schluter-DITRA orange waffle
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