Remove Old Floor Adhesive?

Hi. We removed carpet from our kitchen floor, and there's black (adhesive?) and yellow (from back of carpet?) stuff on top of the original vinyl flooring (most likely asbestos). The black & yellow stuff is of course hardened and uneven.

We plan on putting new Armstrong sheet vinyl down. Is it possible to put a leveler and then adhesive on the floor as it is, without having to remove the old adhesive (and expose ourselves to the toxicity of adhesive removers like Jasco)? If so, can someone make product suggestions? Thank you.

Reply to
Greg
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Is your floor concrete or wood?

If concrete, scrape all the way down to bare concrete. There are many tools available.

If it is wood, you may be best off adding a fresh layer of underlayment.

Reply to
Dan G

Dan, thanks for the reply.

I imagine that if we go with new underlayment, I'd still need to level the existing floor. Can anyone recommend a leveler that would work with the old adhesive still on top of the original vinyl floor. I was going to use Jasco floor leveler, but the label said to remove the old adhesive first, which I'd rather not do.

Reply to
Greg

"Greg" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

I'm doing the floor thing myself right now. One thing I noticed about floor levelers (well, at least Armstrong) is that it is meant to go on 1/8" thick, and the Home Depot said two coats at most for a 1/4 inch maximum. If you are trying to correct 1/8" discrepancies here and there, I think the new underlayment will take care of that pretty well. But if you are looking at leveling wide areas, the Home Depot guy told me that the leveler should be used on top of the underlayment and the vinyl bonded to it, because it doesn't take nails well.

Now in my case, I have a very small bathroom where I'm trying to correct about a 3'x5' area that is sloping to one corner to the tune of about 3/4 of an inch. I plan to remodel the whole bath at some point, at which time I'll rip up the sub floor to the joists and level it that way. But for now, I'm going to pyramid 1/4" and/or 3/8" underlayment in the area to achieve the desired level, and then use Bondo for Home repairs to smooth the transitions between each layer. Then I'll put one final underlayment over the whole deal. How well will it work? I don't know I just came up with this whole scheme about a few hours ago after Home Depot closed. So it looks like the grand experiment starts tomorrow. One thing I do know though is the Bondo Home Repair putty can take the nails, though a tiny pilot hole with a drill will probably be in order. It can definitely take screws. The stuff rocks. Still I'm not positive its a good idea, but my area that needs leveling happens to be an area where there will be no foot traffic. It's almost entirely under the vanity. I won't use it across the entire transitions, but spaced apart in spots no farther apart than floor joists would be. I might not even need the bondo. At any rate, as a leveler beneath the underlayment, seems like an option to me in certain situations. It's too thick to be self leveling, and hardens in minutes, so it depends on the situation as to how useful it could be. Just something to keep in mind. And I think you could apply it over the old adhesive.

Reply to
dando

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