I'm putting tile in the guest bath, and want to pull the linoleum. Sure, I know it makes a great water barrier for the wonder board, but there's discoloration and I really want to check and see if any of the flooring needs replacing.

Right now, it's basically shredding while being pulled.

Will a heat gun help loosen up the adhesive?

Other ideas?

Hand held floor scraper. Lots of elbow grease. Heat may help and remember a lot of old linoleum contained asbestos.

Big one, gets back/hips doing the bulk of the work. Quick and dirty with the big'un', finish out with a hand-scraper for edge work.

I used to remove asbestos for a living. Even if what you've got has asbestos in it, I wouldn't worry about doing a bathroom. Keep it wet with soapy water as it breaks if you're really worried about it, but I wouldn't.

Heat will help. Scrape up what you can, a long handle will help, then use a heat gun on the tough parts.

Whoever built this house, never saw a corner he couldn't cut.

The vanity top was not held in place on the vanity. The only thing holding it all together was the plumbing and the silicon caulking at the corners where the top met the splash guards. Not a dab of adhesive/caulking

The toilet sits in a low spot (1/4" lower than the floor at the back wall, about a foot away) and wasn't caulked down. So there was a puddle collected there next to the drain. Everything was fine until the boys got old enough to stand up, but not old enough to be sure of their aim. So I'm not sure if it's good or bad news, but the particle board underlayment needs to be either gone, or at least replaced in the area near the toilet. My thoughts are that it should be gone, so we'll have less of a height difference with the carpet in the hallway once the wonder board and tile are in place. Is my logic off?

Yeah, you need to get rid of the particle board. When it gets wet it stays wet, think cotton towel. Then that starts rotting subflooring and maybe joists.

Also, if your toilet flanges are plastic, by all means replace them with a PVC flange that has a metal ring for the closet bolts that hold the toilet down.

If you ain't pulled a lot of toilets, save yourself some grief and don't use a wax seal. Get that "donut" thing that Fluidmaster makes, it is no leak/no fail.

Cool - the vanity is out, so I've got nice gap to start prying on to get the underlayment out.


TAK - I assume you mean this thing:
http://www.fluidmaster.com/our-prod...gaskets/toilet-wax-free-bowl-gasket.html


Anyone else use and recommend those? I'd typically just use two wax rings. One with the flange, one without.


Thanks all!

Heat gun will help a bunch

I sure wish you the best, and there must be a better way, but I tore the plywood floor up on a kitchen a few years ago.

That's it. I'm a carpenter, not a plumber. Plumbers don't have any trouble with wax rings, but I've never heard of using two. Not having a callback was worth the extra $ to me.

You can get an extra thick, or maybe it's extra tall, wax ring. I just installed one.

Get a wax ring with a "no seep" rubber flange that sticks down into the soil pipe.

You can also get a riser for your closet flange, if the toilet sits a little low.

I like to replace the plywood and particle board and treat the new subfloor with Thompson's water seal.

Also, I like to bolster the area underneath the toilet with additional cross-members to the floor joists and I use pressure-treated lumber for that.

Also, I'm sold on Fluid-Master flapper valves and fill-valve assemblies.

What do you do if the mastic also contains asbestos?

i've scraped up 1000s of sq yds of linoleum, i peel off the wear layer and any backing that comes up with it. then i soak the rest with warm water and scrape it up with a razor blade scraper.

Wear a mask, be careful, and don't tell ANYBODY about it. Dump the stuff somewhere you don't have to answer questions.

the adhesive shouldn't have asbestos unless its z cutback but that was used primarily for vinyl composite tile.if it was originally laid after the late 70s i wouldn't worry about asbestos.

cut back is black and looks like tar.

Warm soapy water and a lot of effort with the scraper.

Sweet mercy! I'm a big believer in "Do it once the right way, and never do it again." But unless the subfloor looks like it's in sad shape, it's staying in. Though I'll keep that in mind when we redo the master bath.

How well does thinset adhere to flooring that's had Thompsons's applied?

you need to put hardy board over the wood, use thinset with the latex additive.

I've never used Thinset so I can't answer your question. I did two bathrooms using Thompson and then just got some of the Armstrong 12"-square floor tiles and installed them on the particle board. The adhesive seem to stick just fine.

it will work fine with the Thomson's.

Really you can just cut out the subfloor along with the flooring between the joist, pull up the pieces and then the pieces off the joist. Put the new sub flooring down and so on.... much less time consuming imo.

I don't think Thompson's will do anything to prevent rot. They used to sell some stuff called Coppertox that did actually work but I don't think you can buy it any longer.

Do not put thompsons on the floor. If you want to do a water proof job for a bath room the way to go is with red guard, two coats. No water will ever reach the subfloor if done correctly.

Use a utility knife to score through to the subfloor, make your cuts about the width of whatever you're using to scrape it up. It makes the job so much easier to scrape off a 10" width of lino rather than trying to fight with the whole damned sheet.

It looks like Red Guard should go over the backer board, or am I misinterpreting the installation video?

For $135, I'm thinking this may be worthwhile. Our boys are plenty good at getting water everywhere in that bath.


Note to fathers of young boys, about to build a new home: Maybe think "locker room shower" instead of "guest bath".

Scott

i always use red guard when i build a shower that i'm going to tile. good stuff will work on the floor just as good.

Scrape it up and not worry about it. Put it in your kitchen trash bag and toss it in the can. We used to wet it down with something nasty (I can't remember now hat it was) and buff the floor with a buffer and coarse pad, then squeegee it into snow shovels and bag it up.

It's the fibers in asbestos that get you. If a human hair was 40' in diameter an asbestos fiber would be 1/2". It takes a lot of exposure to build up scar tissue in your lungs. Fibers contained in the mastic don't break free as easily as something that crumbles. The surfractants in the dish soap will help break down the surface tension of the water to keep the fibers from getting airborne.

We had to wear air quality monitors while working and NEVER had a sample come back on a floor job that would've required us to even wear masks by OSHA standards, for what that's worth. It's just one bathroom, scrape it and don't worry.

The real harm in removal is in industrial applications where it was used as high temp insulation. Over time it breaks down and when you break it free it'll usually crumble, some of it just poofing into a cloud of killya. You really do have to be careful with that stuff. The big tanks are done in a fully contained negative pressure poly enclosure with battery powered positive pressure full face masks. THAT'S miserable work. They kept the machinery running until we were done and we had one job with a guy who's only responsibility was to keep patching holes in the poly wall that kept melting (it melted at 350*).