I'm in the middle of re-doing my kitchen and having coped with some lousy wiring (cables running diagonally across the walls, cables sitting in channels in the wall but not plastered in behind kitchen units, cooker spur not actually having the earths connected etc I decided to look at the floor.
The previous owners put in the kitchen units and then put the wooden block flooring in round them stopping about 1 inch under the front of the units. Our new kitchen units are different widths so the gaps in the flooring dont lline up and in some areas (like where the cooker was) there is no wooden flooring at all with the old 1971 vinyl tiles being exposed.
The floor in other places is pretty grotty so we have decided that it has to come up and that is where the fun begins: Lifting up some of the wooden block tiles (which seem to be bonded together in 4 inch squares with metal staples also holding together) I find that they have been stuck to the floor with bitumen. However the bitumen seems to be on a thin concrete screed (2-3mm max) which in some places is lifting up with the bitumen revealing the original concrete floor (along with signs of the original glue used to bond the vinyl tiles in place.. yes thats right : under the main part of the floor the vinyl has been removed but not under the back of the cupboards). Obviously the floor was already sealed with the old tile glue simply adding to the seal and so the concrete screed has not bonded to it properly.
I'm planning on putting down some standard size laminate boarding with the thin foam layer underlay so do I:
1) Attempt to remove all the bitumen/screeding and get the floor as smooth as possible 2) Where it comes up it comes up and I should fill in the gaps with another bitumen style sealer 3) Just seal the floor with a general water proof sealer having smoothed off the edges of any of the holes in the screedSteve