Upgrading vinyl flooring with tile

[sclitheroe]

Anyone done this? How hard would you say it is for the average home handyman (someone capable of building their own fence and deck, their own electrical, etc).

Did you remove the vinyl first, or tile right over it with the appropriate bonding materials? I was reading that you can't remove vinyl without damaging/gouging the underlying ply flooring.

Is it something you could do in stages, or does it need to be done one shot?

General advice/warnings/time to run away?

[surferguy]

doable as a handyman, yes. But I would recommend taking up the vinyl. And if it destroys the subfloor in the process then replace it with ply not particle board. Do it right or you will not be stoked on the results. The first tiles I put down are lifting due to a shoddy subfloor, now I have to do them again.

If you did not take up the vinyl and went right over themwith tile, the potential for the vinyl to seperate from the ply exists down the road. That would result is a delaminated tile/mortar/vinyl combo from the ply which would look ugly as hell and create bigger issues. Do it correct from the start, never worry about it again.

When laying tile in a room, pick a point to start and layout all the full pieces over the entire area. If you are comfortable with the poistions and the cuts you need to make, then make the cuts and get the entire floor done and in place. If you are still happy with everything then go ahead and mix up your mud, in small batches and start laying your tiles.

have a wet sponge on hand for cleaning up any squeeze up or mortar drops on the tiles before they dry. DO NOT walk on the floor for 24hr after they are laid! you should be good.

if you have more questions just ask.

[bc-chris]

when we did tile in our house we had the typical 3/4" plywood floor - but we also glued & screwed another 1/2" piece of ply to the areas that were getting tile.




i think the screw pattern was a 6" x 6" grid... or 8" x 8" grid.... i can't remember - this is the powder room floor....

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by surferguy

doable as a handyman, yes. But I would recommend taking up the vinyl.

The more I think about it, the more insane it seems to simply lay tile over vinyl. Does not seem to be the right approach to just pile more stuff on top

[Rathji]

Rip out the old vinyl, if the subflooring is OSB, then you either need to remove it or just put on regular plywood (3/8") over top of it. The reason you do this is both the vinyl and the OSB will absorb water from the adhesive and cause the floor to swell.

As for tiling, it really is easy.

Rememeber your rooms are (probably) not square, so get a string line set up close to one edge of the room in such a location that you wont have something stupid like a 1" gap to cut in along the walls and start laying from there. Have all the tile at the same temperature of the room you will be laying it in. I think they suggest the tile be in the room for 2 days prior to laying it.

Make sure the floor is prepped, level and clean before you start. Finding out you missed a nail from your old baseboard or there is a giant bump on your floor as you set a tile on it is a huge pain.

We had one person constantly mixing adhesive, one person doing the cutting and one person laying the tile and marking cuts and it flowed pretty smoothly. Try and get your tile saw set up some place that is close but won't be in the way. It makes a pretty decent mess depending on the type of saw you have, and remember that you want your tile to be the same temp as the room you are laying it in, so no storing the tile in the garage when it is -20 and cutting it there and bringing it to a much warmer room.

Figure out a good ratio of adhesive to water early on, so you don't need to be constantly guessing as it goes along how much water you need for each batch. You can buy a mixer attachment for a drill that can work for making sure the adhesive is well mixed, but it takes a ton of time to do it that way. When I did it, I got so sick of making sure it was smooth that I just made it pretty good and then smoothed out the little lumps as I applied it.

Make sure you use the little spacer things (white T shaped dealios).

It really is possible to spread it out. When I did my Mom's house we ripped everything out 1 weekend. Put the new plywood won the second weekend. 3rd weekend we put the tile down, and this required about a 24 hour 'stay off period' so the tiles would set, although that is being ultra safe, because I have walked on tile after 3-4 hours and it wasn't an issue, just need to be really careful. 4th week we grouted. During the following week she sealed the tile.

The main things to watch out for are making sure the tile is level and evenly spaced. Something might not seem like a big deal when you put it down, but when you run your bare feet across the raised edge of a tile every day for the next 15 year it gets annoying. Also, I found knee pads are very nice, but I have a knee injury so I may be overstating their usefulness

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Rip out the old vinyl, if the subflooring is OSB, then you either need to remove it or just put on regular plywood (3/8") over top of it. The reason you do this is both the vinyl and the OSB will absorb water from the adhesive and cause the floor to swell.

How common is OSB subflooring in a new-ish home (house is five years old). I'm not at the stage yet where I want to rip up a piece of vinyl to find out.

Thanks again everyone.

[theonlywhiteout]

why would you switch to tile? vinyl flooring gets the best sound you can experience..

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

How common is OSB subflooring in a new-ish home (house is five years old). I'm not at the stage yet where I want to rip up a piece of vinyl to find out.

Thanks again everyone.

Given what I see brand new houses in Elgin being made of, I am guessing the odds are pretty close to 100%

[Flash Walken]

Rathji made a great post up there about the process.

One thing I will say to supplement his information is, it may not seem like it, but the thinner you lay the thin-set, the better (within reason of course). Really take your time to make sure it is level, and that there isn't a tremendous amount of thin-set in the grout lines between tiles.

It's a small thing, but it can prevent a lot headaches. Like when you go to pull out the spacers, which, as it is your first time, I highly recommend.

edit: you'll also have an easier time laying Italian or Sri Lankan tile over Chinese tile, as most Chinese producers are notorious for poor quality (crooked tiles, shadows in porcelain, etc.)

[redforever]

We did a reno a couple of years ago, and replaced all our vinyl flooring with tile. We never did it ourselves though.

The guy we got would not hear of putting tile over vinyl.

Our house was about 15 years old at the time, so it had Kboard. We had a demolition crew rip all of that out.

Then the tile guy put down plywood, glued and screwed it. He does not offer guarantees on his work if he has not done the work.

Then he marked the whole floor in squares, with that chalk stuff. And he made sure not to have 1" pieces of tile anywhere. Maybe the size of our rooms etc helped with that. Anyhow, there is no small piece of tile like that in the kitchen, the nook, back entrance, bathroom or hallway. And actually, except for having to put another thin piece of tile on the kickboard by a work desk, our rooms were square!!!

Then he did all the cutting for any tiles that could not be laid in one piece and he installed those first. And after that, because the floor was all chalked off in squares, he could lay tile wherever he wanted, making it somewhat convenient for us to walk while the laid tiles dried.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Given what I see brand new houses in Elgin being made of, I am guessing the odds are pretty close to 100%

I took a look under the cap that covers where the main floor meets the basement steps, and its OSB. So that right there adds quite a bit of complexity to the project that I'm not so sure about anymore - seems to be tons of differing opinions about whether to use one more layers of ply over OSB, a membrane, etc.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I took a look under the cap that covers where the main floor meets the basement steps, and its OSB. So that right there adds quite a bit of complexity to the project that I'm not so sure about anymore - seems to be tons of differing opinions about whether to use one more layers of ply over OSB, a membrane, etc.

My uncle, a general contractor, suggested the plywood for the reasons I mentioned above. I was hesitant about it at first because of the added height but in the end it didn't really matter much.

[Deviaant]

In my experience you are going to have one heck of a time getting the current tiles off of the OSB without bring chunks of the OSB with it. So i'd really take a look at adding some plywood for sheer stability. You dont want a bouncy, uneven sub-floor with some nice new expensive rigid tiles on top of it, it just spells disaster from what I have encountered.

You have to be carefull because if you decide to add plywood its ultimately going to add a lot of height to your floor. Id say consider a good 1 side fir. IMO fir is stronger than spruce and although spruce is avail. in a sanded 1 side (yes there is a differance in sanded 1 side and good 1 side, it has to do with the quality of wood they use on the face) it is inferior mostly due to the fact it is not a true smooth surface and there are pucks where the big knotts used to be but its still weaker.

I'd take a quick measurement of your doors and see how far they are above the current floor. I'd guess maybe 3/4" on par. You could easily raise the total height of your floor by 1" to maybe as high as 1 1/4" once you add say 1/4" ply your tiles maybe 1/2" plus maybe another 1/4" to 1/2" of mortar and such. Hiring a carpenter to alter your doors can be costly around $80/hr in my experience at around an hour a door. Next id take a sample of my baseboards into my hardware store just to make sure that particular profile and size are infact still made. In my experience at least one piece of baseboard will break. Oh and when you are taking off the piece of baseboard try and get one with a little sticker on the back. That sticker contains the info on the profile and maker of that brand. Although its the same profile it may vary in dimensions due to a different manufacturer.

Well thats just some of the things a person needs to think about before mucking around with their floors. Just be carefull you dont want to not be aware of all the secondary things you may have to spend money on.

[Red Slinger]

If you've never done it before the how-to video's on Youtube can be helpful for some little tips and tricks that could end up making a big difference.

[algernon]

Ditra membrane from Schluter allows you to go over OSB, and only ads about 5/16 of height. It is also an uncoupling membrane, which allows for some shear movement. It costs aprox. $1.50/ft, but is well worth it, as it can go in faster than plywood, and provides an excellent substrate.

I installed 24"x24" Quartzite tile purchased from the set surplus of "Night at the Museum 2" in North Van a couple of years ago over Ditra XL. Before the Ditra, I installed 3 zones of electric in-floor heating, and everything is performing as expected.
I don't install with out anymore, as it solves too many headaches, and it's the only product with a 5 year warranty, AKAIK.



As others mentioned, stay clean as you go, because life sucks when you're scraping dried grout all day. I usually keep a dozen clean, rung-out sponges/clean water pails on hand when setting and grouting, although if you over clean grout, you can end up with efflorescence.

Oh, and when laying out, you should never end up with less than a full tile.
To eliminate the small piece, add a full tile to the scrap and divide by 2. That is your starting cut (and should be your final cut). Don't forget to include your grout width when calculating for cuts. I can always tell a rookie's layout when you see one side of a room starting out with a full tile, then a 3" sliver row running along the opposite wall.