My husband and I have moved into the attic apartment at his parent's house. This was grandma's apartment when he was a kid and everything in it is 50 years old including the flooring. I want to install Allure Trafficmaster vinyl flooring. I installed it in my condo in Florida with great success and love it, it cleans easily, it's easy to install and it's inexpensive.
I'd like to just put it right on top of the ugly vinyl flooring that currently exists in the kitchen here but that vinyl is curled up at almost every edge. I'm thinking I have to either remove the vinyl or uncurl the edges in order to be able to use the Allure product since it's a "floating" floor and only sticks at the perimeter.
Any suggestions as to the best way to handle this problem? Thanks.
Whatever you do, don't try to remove the vinyl floor altogether (especially in an old house, and especially using power tools). Just cover over the existing vinyl. Years ago, they used to make some vinyl floors with asbestos fibers. When you try to remove the old flooring, the asbestos can become airborne and eventually trigger serious asbestos related health issues if you breathe it in.
The best guidance with existing vinyl floors is to leave them intact and just cover over them. If you discover that the subfloor is not level enough for the new vinyl after you cut out the curled edges, you can get a concrete based leveling compound from Lowe's, Home Depot, Menards, Ace, etc. You spread it on like peanut butter and smooth it out with a trowel, and it fills the gap and gives you a solid and level surface to put the new floor on.
When you try to remove the old flooring, the asbestos can become airborne and eventually trigger serious asbestos related health issues if you breathe it in.
Thanks for that. I places it's so cracked I can see that someone tried to nail the curled cracked pieces to the floor. Thankfully that part is under the refrigerator.
I completely forgot about the asbestos and since this is probably 50 year old flooring I'll leave it be and just cut the curled parts as suggested and use the leveling compound.
I have read that thread and I know that there are some compelling stories about Allure but, I installed it successfully in two rooms in my condo in FL and it's beautiful and the perfect thing for us, easy to install, inexpensive, low maintenance and looks good too.
all that said, if someone could recommend another product that was as easy to install and similarly priced I'd definitely consider it.
Julzology, one other product I'd recommend looking at is TrafficMaster Ceramica groutable vinyl tiles. Home Depot sells them for about $1.39 a square foot. They're peel and stick tiles, but the things that are awesome about them is that they look just like ceramic, can be laid right over an existing vinyl floor, and are groutable.
I just finished the laundry room floor in a rental house I own with it with 1/4 inch groutlines. I installed the ceramica tiles right over the existing vinyl floor.
I can't speak to long-term durability yet, but the finished floor looks amazing - just like ceramic tile, but far easier and cheaper to install. They come with a 15 year light commercial warranty, and the grout lines in theory should produce a waterproof floor. The downside of traditional peel and stick tiles is that any water that gets in between and then underneath them can cause individual tiles to come loose - properly grouted vinyl tiles shouldn't suffer from that problem.
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