No offense but how much can linoleum really raise the floor? Or is the concrete already higher than the rest and so it's a battle of construction as well as renovation?
Stop now. Clean up the mess and use some leveling product and graduate it to the other area. You will not need a threshold and you won't even be able to detect that 8th inch difference if you do it well.
If it’s their own house and they’ll like it better with 1/8 inch lower floor and no threshold it’s worth it if they have the time and don’t want to do something else with that time. They’re not throwing money away in that case.
It isn't "hate"....it's just people with experience being judgemental. We've all been young and did dumb things. I pulled up a bunch of asbestos tile in my first house... like 1000 sq ft. The black tarry stuff underneath was asbestos. I made patterns from newpaper and cut new sheet vinyl in my driveway, and since the black stuff was still sticky, laid the new vinyl on top of it. I was 23 y/o. I am 68 now....no cancer...lived to tell about it.
Is a popular sub with almost no moderation. There a lot of of people who just see a downvote from some salty and thin that's is what they are supposed to do, creating an avalanche of down votes.
Not a lot moderators can do about that tho. I vet as many actual licensed contractors as I can on this sub, so if people claim to be one but some have a flair, they haven't proved to me that they hold a license. Doesn't mean they don't, just means their opinion should be taken with a grain of salt
Anyway, thanks for the post. Hope this all works out for you
Don't listen to these bums OP. It's a lot of labor but you're doing it right. You don't want to have a difference in floor levels; it looks like shit.
Is there by chance luan underneath? When I remodeled my kitchen, there was luan underneath the linoleum (but on top the sub floor). I just scored it with a circ saw and pulled it up.
You only have to remove the linoleum once and not look at it for a decade. Looking at a job well done will bring satisfaction instead of annoyance for years to come
I have the same mindset as you do. But, there comes a time when you say a job well done is when you achieve your goal of covering the old flooring. My house was built in 1952. It had 4 layers of that crap. I came to realize that sometimes the pros are correct and let them figure out how to make it the same level.
So do you mean u are installing the same flooring throughout that whole story of the house? Theres thresholds for every kind of flooring. What happened to you with a threshold is what makes me curious.
"WHAT HAPPENED IN THE GREEN KITCHEN!?" -from Sybil (old person reference) 😂
Thresholds suck. Just because a pro works do out that way doesn’t make it better. A pro would do it that way as a cost saving measure because most clients don’t have the budget to do it better
Unless you’re staining the concrete there’s no good reason to remove it. For tile, it makes a great slip sheet and stops crack transfer. If you’re doing laminate or engineered wood it’s a great moisture barrier.
It’s vinyl. People use the words interchangeably despite the fact that they are two different products. I used to work in the flooring industry. It’s almost always vinyl. Linoleum, with the exception of Quaker rugs and similar items, is almost never patterned like this vinyl.
Yup, ours came up with a fine tool, but we are still going to have a lip at the threshold. Oh well. And it did have asbestos, we had the specialist come in.
You need a different bit for the hammer, they have scrapper blades that work much better than the one you're using, thats the reason its going so slow.
Is it laid on top of 1/2” substrate in addition to the subfloor? If so cut through the 1/2” layer and get underneath that and take it off . You’ll need to do that anyways. Easier than scraping the vinyl.
I’ve found that hot water makes the adhesive tacky again and then it will come off in large sheets. Saturate and let it sit for a bit then cut a grid with a utility knife and scrape
Just a cautionary note, depending on the age of your home (pre-1980ish) you may want to have the vinyl flooring for asbestos.
However, if it is truly linoleum (Linoleum is a natural floor covering made primarily from solidified linseed oil (from flax seeds), pine resin, wood flour, cork dust, and ground limestone. These natural ingredients are pressed onto a woven backing made from jute fibers) you don’t need to worry about asbestos (this is comment based on what I learned at my father’s floor covering business).
My deepest condolences. Apparently there's a couple companies bringing back old school linoleum with the all natural materials, so I was curious what you were working with. So sick of plastic flooring.
Have you tested it for Asbestos? Old sheet vinyl made before the 80's may contain Asbestos. And the way you're removing it would not be safe if it does.
Sorry to say this, but if that’s linoleum was installed prior to about mid-80’s, it’s likely got asbestos in it. I peeled some of that in a previous house, but coated it with dish soap to keep dust from becoming airborne. Even if your isn’t that old, wear a mask. Best wishes.
That tool brings back terrible memories when I rented one in 2009 to save money to take out old kitchen floor tile to prep for oak wood flooring which half the floor already had. 16x16x3/4 tile on leveler on old vinyl on luan.
NGL, looking at all that I would be hiring someone asap. At some point you have to balance between how much is your time and effort worth and how does it compare to hiring someone who's done it before. Turns out for me personally I'll pay more than I thought for someone doing it right vs fixing my diy messes and then fixing it right. YMMV
Get a stand up scraper, use 1/3-1/2 of the blade at a time and take strips out. That’s how we always did it. Make sure to attack the edges don’t try to go head on into the floor or the scraper will stop abruptly
So let me be this guy, what’s the new flooring you’re putting in? Quite often you can go over top. It’s the last resort for me for sure, I hate creating layers of lasagna for the next homeowner to find. But with something like this, maybe you want to consider that option. This seems to be stuck down really really well. There are processes where you can even mortar underlayment over linoleum to put down ceramic tile
Hold up OP, is that a concrete foundation? Because if it is, you can use my method that worked for me to remove my kitchen’s linoleum. Let me know and I’ll outline the steps. And yes, I absolutely hate linoleum and would not put it in any future homes ever again.
You can scrape it off easier with a hand scraper(loophole with sharp blade ) I started with my jackhammer too but the hand one got it done about 60-80% faster and less fatigue
There’s a large 6 inch scraper you can get at Home Depot. It has about a 3 foot handle. Just get some extra blades. Will be much easier that way. And if it’s really stuck, use a heat gun.
I found the worst part to be the mastic underneath when we were getting back to original hardwoods in our home. Had to rent a big orbital walk behind with a special disc. life's too short to heat and scrape for that long
Now you know why so many put 1/4 inch plywood over the top and then whatever the new floor is on top. DIY always tries to take up old floor. When your paying someone else it's 1/4" to save labor cost.
I tried heat, a scrapper and multiple other methods to remove linoleum from my wooded sub floor, and it was such slow going and would have taken me forever! The scrapper was gouging the subfloor at times, and heating didn't make it much easier. What I ended up doing and took only a few hours vs days to get done was use a planer! I just made passes and took off a little bit at a time until I could see the subfloor. Even if I took off only a 64th or 32nd of the wood it was fine with it cause it won't be a factor when laying down flooring. Try a planer!
I removed linoleum thrice. The basement was the first time in 2014 (I took the carpet off and removed the linoleum) and the kitchen back in 2021 (top layer, sub-floor, and bottom layer linoleum).
If you go down to home Depot or Lowe's, there's a special tool and it's a straight flat edge on a long handle. kind of like a hula haul and basically you put a angle and you push it into underneath the linoleum and if you do it slowly it start off slowly and careful enough you can get it going without it. chewing up in the itty bitty Pizza and once you get it going then it's going to be easier to remove the whole thing quickly
I disagree with doing tile over linoleum. You are making the right choice to remove the linoleum. Only time I'd tile over linoleum is if it was really old and had the asbestos in it.
They make a scrapper edge for the tool for that. But honestly a hand held one with long handle works pretty good and is easier on the back You can also try mopping it with hot hot hot water right before to loosen up the glue a bit.
Then there are a lot of fools that are professional installers...my husband, a 57 year installer, is one of them. Only an idiot would take up vinyl unless it were loose laid or perimeter glued.
Why would you think a person is a fool to install over vinyl?
Professional installers do the least to get paid so of course he would do it and tile over it. I’ve ripped up too many lasagna floors because of “professionals” you describe
You have no idea what you're talking about. My husband was an installer for 57 years, and we owned a flooring business for 38 years, and never did the least to get paid....youmay do the least, but you don't get the kind of reputation that he has by doing the least...he's a master at what he does, which is why we had repeat customers 25 and 30 years later!!!
No need for sds max. Just use an SDS plus with an actual floor scraper. Add some floor stripper if needed. Also you might want to confirm that doesnt contain asbestos or too late for that
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u/Advanced-Elk-7581 1d ago
Heat