Sheet Vinyl Flooring Removal - DIY Chatroom

yoods · 11-22-2007, 09:38 AM

This question may have been posted and replied to before but I could not find any answers when searching, so…

We have a home constructed in 1992 that has sheet vinyl in our kitchen (approximately 124 SF). We are planning to remove the vinyl so we can screw down the sub floor to eliminate a few squeaks and stabilize the floor (there is not a lot of movement in it) and install Dura Ceramic tile above it.

So the question, what is the best way for a DIY to removal sheet vinyl? FYI, if it matters, it appears that the vinyl was not perimeter glued, but glued under its entirety.

We were told to use a wallpaper remover with a lot of replacement blades and slowly do small sections at a time to make sure we remove all vinyl down to the sub floor, It was also suggested that the job could take up to four hours if done right.

Any suggestions or thoughts or experiences on how to do this are very welcome.

Couple of extra questions, would it be worth my while to buy and use a heat gun to do this? How do the pros removal sheet vinyl? Are there different or better tools to do this work than I have listed?

Thanks very much and have a great Thanksgiving!

slakker · 11-22-2007, 12:27 PM

I've had some success in ripping out glued down with a floor scraper. You can get this too from most reno stores and it's a heavey scraper that has a 8 to 16 inch blade on it with a long handle. So get it under the vinyl and scrape/full the vinyl out in large sheets...

Chris Johnson · 11-22-2007, 02:04 PM

If you can check and see if there is a 1/4 subfloor below the vinyl but on top of the original subfloor, best place to look is where is terminates at a door or at a heat register, if there is (normally there is, it's a good clean surface to adhere vinyl to) set you blade height @ 3/8" and run a cut right through the center of the floor. Now use J-bars and crowbars to remove the vinyl and old subfloor in one shot. There is going to be a ton of staples used to secure the subfloor use sidecutters and start pulling.