Vinyl Tile Mess

[Dawn]

My husband installed vinyl tiles in our basement utility room last winter (glue-on tiles over concrete). The glue never dried, and has been oozing out between the tiles since they were installed, and now with summer and a bit of humidity, the tiles are sliding all over the place. It's a real mess.

I suspect part of the problem may be that he didn't read directions and didn't let the glue sit for the 90 minutes prior to laying the tile.

At any rate, I've got a gluey-sticky mess that I need to clean up and I really have no idea how to start.

I could pull up the tiles, but what do I use to clean up the sticky glue?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

[jim]

get some playground sand.. spread it around to pick up some of the gluey mess... take a shovel and use your foot to push it along and lift the tiles... then throw them away, they are ruined.....i used a razor blade scraper(single edge razor blades in a scraper with a handle and just keep on scraping(it worked to get off the hard glue that was down holding on the old tiles that i had to remove from a utility room, concrete floor..... i also used putty knives and broad (wide blade knives, think they were for spreading sheet rock mud mix, but they worked for what i needed..... i cant understand GOOD vinyl floor tile cement not drying in over a year...... go to a place like Ace hardware or true value where you can talk to an owner of the store and get some good information and tell them what the problem was and maybe they can figure it out..... the stuff i used dried in a few minutes or so.......

also ask the hardware store guy how to apply it... i used the side of blade that was serrated in a small pattern and it took off much of the paste from the floor while spreading it.. might be he had too much on the floor in the first place????? but it still should have dried in a year......

[zmike6]

I'm NOT recommending the following, but when I lived in an apartment a few years ago and they installed new vinyl tile, I came into the apartment to find them dousing the floor with lighter fluid (a LOT of it) to clean up the excess glue. Talk about a no-smoking situation.