anyone have any advice on how to remove an old linoleum floor? this puppy seems to be glued incredibly well — i can break pieces of the flooring away from its backing, but the paper-like (??) substrate is holding on to the original pine floor for dear life….any help or am i simply consigned to hours’ worth of fun and swearing?
stephen
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Replies
How old is it? Does it contain asbestos? Would you better served to lay underlayment over it and save yourself the aggrevation?
Assuming your are trying to get back to the orginal pine flooring, right?
Next question is: is it linoleum or vinyl? Most linoleum floors did not have paper backing and were asphalt based products. Newer vinyl floors have a paper like backing that is grayish in color, so if you are seeing paper, it is probably vinyl.
What color is the glue or adhesive, if you scape through to the pine floor? Black is a "cut glue" and was solvent based. Very though to remove, but if you search the archives, I think it has been discussed. A clear or yellowish color may indicate a water base adhesive. In that case try laying a wet rag on it. Some water base adhesive will release when wet. If it does release with water, one caution is to not food the floor to hurry the job. You don't want to ruin the pine floor with excessive water.
Final option is a floor sander.
Another caution is that you don't know how old it is, take a sample to someone that does asbestos testing. If it contains asbestos, I'll have to agree with the first advice. Put down new underlayment and recover with your new flooring. The asbestos removal would cost you more than the salvaged pine floor.
Good luck.
I've had good luck with water even on the black adhesives. Some of them are water soluable, too.
-- J.S.
thanks, everyone, for the advice. i have a hunch that this floor, be it vinyl or linoleum, will find itself buried under another layer of flooring...
stephen
hello stephen
i have been it the same spot, wonderful fir floors covered by ugly linoleum and tile circa 1950's. i found that if i scape off the may part, and then use boiling water on the paper it scaped off very easy i took the finish also bur i had to scrape it off also. sanded, refinished and wall-la, nice fir floors.
try it ina samll spot under the frig or dw, and check it out. :)
Recently a friend demonstrated a trick. He had to replace several linoleum pieces that had cracked. He used a chunk of dry ice to freeze the tiles and the asphalt base adhesive. Then he broke it up with a ball peen hammer using a tapping motion.
Other than a couple of quarter sized spots of the tar all three tiles came up clean. He used a vacuum to pick up the still frozen pieces. A scraper and some solvent cleaned up the spots. Doing this he ended up with a nice smooth surface for the new tiles.
It was only 3 tiles but having done a similar job I was impressed. I suppose it could be used on a larger area. Something to think about. Dry ice is cheap around here and what you don't use will keep lunches frosty for several days. Just don't freeze the beer solid. Much harder to drink that way.