I’m in the middle of renovating our breezeway / three season porch and ran into a problem.
We removed the ever so lovely carpeting which was installed approximately 35 years ago. My idea was to put tile down, since carpeting is not ideal what with trailing in snow, rain, leaves, etc. Unfortunately, the floor is very uneven (cracks in two areas have lifted the floor approximately 1/4" along the seams).
Because of the cracks, just slapping plywood down and tiling over it wouldn’t work.
I thought okay, I’ll spend the money and buy a few bags of self leveling concrete and start from scratch. The instructions I have read from a few brands have stated ALL glue must be removed from the floor first.
Have you tried to remove 35 year old glue? I did. It worked for crap. After an hour of scraping, I managed to get a 1’ x 1’ area cleaned. In some areas, it appears there was paint under the glue, in other areas they used some weird glue that left ridges that the remover was completely unable to soften up.
I’m not sure what to do next. I really do not want carpeting out there, even the carpet tiles. I’d LIKE to put down VCT tiles, as they would stand up to the wear and tear of being in a heavily used breezeway, they’re easy to clean, and I like the look of them.
Do I HAVE to get all the glue off before using self leveling concrete? Any suggestions on just how to get the glue off? Or would you say screw it and carpet it?
Level in 3/4 plywood. Find the highest point of the offset and shim everywhere else to bring the new surface level and flat.
Sandblast. Messy but doable if you completely seal off adjacent doors and windows. A pro can probably do it for a reasonable amount, and you’d have a roughened surface that would bond to the self-leveling compound very well.
Put up with some unevenness in the finished floor. We had a tile surface that went into an extension over what had formerly been the sill of the foundation, and there was no reasonable way to level things… so the master tile guy just let the floor have a gentle hump at that point. Barely noticeable and acted as a secondary dam to keep bathroom flooding out of the living room.
OTOH, if the glue is as hard and resistant as the concrete itself, I wouldn’t worry about it interfering with the leveling pour. I’d take the instructions as “get anything soft and gooey out of the way.”
Yes, it’s a concrete floor that was once painted THEN they glued carpeting down.
When I used the glue remover, it did soften a good bunch of the glue, it just wouldn’t scrape off. It was taunting me, I swear. Even my friend who is doing the remodeling was stymied.
Everything else in the breezeway was kludged - why remove original siding when we can just toss cheap fake wood paneling on top! Why actually run a new line for a ceiling light when we can run an extension cord to an outlet hidden behind the workbench in the garage? Why pour a new step to the back door when you can float (!) a wooden step and cover it in carpet? But the floor? We’ll make sure to use the best glue ever!
The California house I extensively remodeled was full of that kind of crap, including cheap carpeting that was glued to the padding, which in turn had been tacked down by the Mad Tacker - he really must have enjoyed pounding away with a tack stapler, because the padding had a staple about every six inches (instead of about one every two feet). Took forever to tear out the carpet, then had to scrape the floor with a heavy-duty tile scraper to pull out/shear off the staples.
Jest throw down some damn shag over the whole mess. It’ll look fab and ain’t no one will never know the dif’rance.
I missed the slab detail; I was picturing buckled plywood. I’d be worried about tiling over a broken slab like that. Your tile could easily crack as the slab continues to shift. Something with some flexibility might be better. Self leveling concrete isn’t going to actually fix the problem, it’s just a patch.
I’ve put down VCT tiles twice (both times in very small areas, just to replace 20 or 30 tiles). Once on wood, once on concrete. Both times I just removed the old glue as best as I could, usually with a disc sander or some kind of grinder, but it usually left quite a bit of residue. I put down the new glue, let it dry for a few hours and put down the tile. In both cases (including one with very heavy foot traffic) it’s been just fine.
You mentioned that there are ‘weird ridges’ is it just the ridges left by the notched trowel? Do they ridges kinda look like this? If that’s the case, that’s just from the original application of the glue. Even if you can just get everything knocked down to the concrete, you should be good. You won’t be good, however, if you try to trowel new glue over the old ridges, the vinyl tile won’t sit properly, nothing will be level and it’ll crack within a few weeks.
BTW, if you use any kind of power tools (like a disk sander) be prepared for more dust than you can imagine. It’s going to be on everything. That stuff generates an amazing amount of dust and throws it everywhere. Cover everything up and maybe open the windows and put some fans nearby to direct the dust outside.
You can also mitigate dust some using dust collection (shopvac for example) connected to the sander or angle grinder. Most of these tools come with adapters and shrouds designed for this.
While this doesn’t stop all dust, it certainly helps. You still need to seal off the rest of the house. And make sure you wear hearing protection and a respirator.
Here are twophotos of the areas that are the worst. The bluish stuff could either be from the removed carpeting or paint, I’m not sure. The first photo shows one of the ridged cracks along the wall.
I feel your pain.
I live in a house built in 1902 with a second addition built sometime before I was born and have lived in houses “improved” from magazine articles ranging to 1930’s editions of Second World Life to some one taking a best guess and using whatever was handy.
Just a wild guess is…if you level fairly decently my first thought would be laying down some AstroTurf. Solid footing. Cleans your boots off fairly nice and it almost looks like grass!!!
Plus one could paint yard markers and erect goal posts for playing winter football.
