I am trying to remove some 20 year old sheet vinyl flooring which I plan to replace with new vinyl. Since it was curling up in places and appeared to be easy to pull up, I assumed it would all come up easily. In many areas just the top surface of the vinyl comes up leaving the bottom surface still glued to the plywood floor. I have a pretty heavy duty floor scraper that I have been using with some success, however there are still a lot of areas that won’t budge. Am I going to have to sand the floor or is there some kind of solvent that might loosen the remains? I have already considered burning down the house, but I am afraid that is just wishful thinking.
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Water is a great solvent for losening sheet vinyl. But you would have to flood the floor. Scraping and cursing is how I always did it.
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Try some detergent in the water to help it "wet" better.
Rent an electric floor scraper. Has a sharp oscillating blade that will remove all residue. Fast too.
There is such a thing as adhesive solvent that will help to cut down on the scraping and swearing, although some effort is still involved. Thank you for reminding me I will be needing some on Wednesday. Have fun, and concentrate on how nice it will look when you are done
Dan
paint thinner...
safer..
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Since new vinyl will telegraph imperfections in the underlay I'll usually overlay the whole thing (without tearing up the vinyl) or cut the old underlay/vinyl into manageable pcs and tear it all out.
Maybe, lay wet towells over the problem pcs of vinyl for a while and then use the scraper.
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Thanks for all your suggesttions. I tried the soapy water method first without much luck. Then I rented the power scraper from HD. That did a pretty decent job on the top layer of the vinyl but did not make much of a dent in the lower. I took it back to HD and then rented a rectagular floor sander. It took several hours but at least it finally got all the paper off. I guess if I had to do it again I would have just covered the old stuff with a layer of underlayment. That probably would have been the least painful way to go - other than burning down the house! Thanks all of you for all your help.
I just had that same situation and the entire floor had the lower surface of the vinyl that stayed on the floor.
What worked for me was to use a 3 1/4" powered planer (Bosch) over the entire floor.
Sounds like a lot of work, and it was - but it was the quickest way to get the floor down to subfloor bare wood.
This was a kitchen that I just finished and I installed 3/4" hardwood flooring in.
I used the planer hooked up to my Fein vac the entire time - no dust.
Good luck,
Julian
That does sound like a lot of work. Happily, this job is now behind me. Thanks for responding.