Your Expertise Please

[kishgo]

Hubby and I are planning on laying some vinyl tiles in our little bathroom (25 square metres). We know the toilet has to be removed. The current flooring is a smooth, non cracked, no bumps, dry vinyl 18 year old flooring. In perfect shape.
The vinyl tile company called Harveymaria says that we have to remove the old flooring and apply the new to plywood. On About.com Home Renovations it says that we apply the new onto the old.
So, have you had any experience with this? How did it work out? Would you advise us to remove the old vinyl? (not my preference!!)
The flooring is quite fun. It's called Bubbles and it looks like little kids have blown bubbles all over the floor!
Thanks in advance for your advice!

[growler]

well i used to do it by just gluing the new ones right over the old with no problems until about 10-12 years ago !
then my bride went and found some very costly (as in big$)tiles for in our dining room.
and at first it was problem free. but upon deciding to change the rug under the dining room table, a yellow stain was found (looked like mustard had been spilled on the floor), and it was at the side where i sat !
so after a couple of meals of cold shoulder and hot tongue, she said well i wonder what stained that spot as i have scrubbed it many times but the stain refuses to come out !
so upon hearing that i went and found about 20 tiles of the same stuff that had been left over from the initial instalation and compared them and as it had been covered with an area rug there was no fading or discoloration so i replaced the 4 or 5 stained tiles.
well in about4-5 months the replacements started showing a similar stain to the former tiles ?
so i again went and found the leftover tiles but this time i got the mfg's name and wrote them a letter explaining what had happened !
then about a month later one night when i called home, my bride said when she got home from work a company rep had been waiting in his car in the drive, he came into the house, inspected the tiles, took one of the leftover tiles and gave her a token thingy for another purchase of enough to redo the whole floor !
that weekend when i got home she said she had told him i had removed the old tile prior to gluing the new ones down,(which wasn't true) but he figured she wasn't lying so gave her the token.
but upon doing it he told her he was baffled as he had only ever seen discoloration like that when they were put over old tile !
apparently they wick the color up from the ones underneath !
so when she got new tiles the following spring i stripped the old tiles of and never had a problem !
so i can't say it caused the problem,but i think it did maybe!
but as i've said before, i'm not the brightest candle on the cake !

[observer]

We don't install the tile ourselves, but the guy who does it for us insists that the floor be stripped down to the plywood. If it's a bigger area, there usually needs to be new, thicker plywood as well (but that's with ceramic tile, that I'm thinking about) - but it sounds as tho' your's is small enough not to have to do that.

In spite of the extra work - at the present - I would be inclined to strip it down - and start fresh on the plywood. As growler suggests, even bleeding thro of colour might be an issue - and just not worth risking after going thro the expense and the labour of doing this anew.

[Rick Wisson]

Listen to your installer..

[kishgo]

That would be my hubby and me Rick. We really don't want to remove this vinyl flooring. We had to do so in the kitchen (exactly the same flooring) and it was a nightmare. Vinyl was glued to the plywood. We worked on it forever before we put down the red pine plank flooring.
But given the advice by growler and observer, we are reconsidering.
As an aside....our kitchen tiles in our city home were glued to the drywall. A prof. came in to help and he couldn't remove any of the tiles without taking the drywall too. So, we retiled over the existing backsplash/tiles. Looks great! Feel sorry for the next people who want to change the backsplash, two layers to remove!

[observer]

We went through a similar experience with removing wall tiles in both bathrooms. In the first one, we tried to save the drywall- lots of extra time and work involved. In the second one - just went for it - took off the dry wall too - right away. It IS extra work & money to redrywall- but actually worth the time and effort of removing the tile without doing so.

So - in your small bathroom, kishgo - given the explanation of how difficult the last removal was - maybe you can as easily afford to give it a try without taking up the tile - and if it screws up - redo in the future!

[retired2]

Just put new plywood over the existing tile

[observer]

Just put new plywood over the existing tile

There's just about always an easier solution, isn't there?

Only possible problem might be that the new floor would be raised higher than adjacent ones - and could therefore, become a bit of a tripping issue.

[Ruby Tuesday]

Ah, what's 0.25" amongst friends?!?

[kishgo]

Ruby!
We had thought about putting plywood on top of the vinyl flooring, but nixed to for two reasons, one the height and second, it just seemed redundant.
Honestly, RT, I'm STILL laughing!!!!!!!!!!

[gale force]

I've had some experience doing this job both ways. We tried the route of putting vinyl tile directly over vinyl flooring. Looked great for about a year and then the glue on the tile backing oozed out and the tiles started moving. At that point, the professionals were called in (Terry at Carpet One in Dover) and he advised putting thin plywood over the now two layers and sheet vinyl over that. The job looked beautiful and because the complete entrance, kitchen, hallway and bath had been done, there was no problem with any change in height. That problem can usually be taken care of with a "transition" border at the location of the change. (I think that's what its called). Good luck!!

[retired2]

I knew I was right

[retired2]

Well maybe

[kishgo]

We wrote to the place of purchase (which just happened to be in England) and they strongly advised us to start from scratch for all the reasons given on this forum but especially Gale Force's experience.
Thank you all!

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