Vinyl flooring over tiles?

Question

I've got a couple of bathrooms that currently have way ugly, large

12x12 ceramic tile on the floor. They're vitreous, but not shiny glazed and are not completely smooth. They are sound, stable, and uncracked. I want to put sheet vinyl in, but I really don't want to rip out everything down to the subfloor and build up from there.

My plan is to clean the hell out of the tiles, skim some cement patching & fnishing compound over them with a long straightedge, and then glue the vinyl over that.

Questions:

Am I crazy? Will this work?
Will the cement stain through the new vinyl?
What sort of glue should I use, and how should it be put on?

Thanks!

-Pete

AJScott · Accepted Answer

Our subfloor was pretty much like yours when we had a friend of the extended family who's been a professional floor guy since the late 1970s come in and put in sheet vinyl in our kitchen. There was nothing wrong whatsoever with pretty much the same kind tiles you have, yet he for some reason he saw fit to scrape them all up to get down to the original subfloor. I thought this was rather peculiar behavior for a contractor, so I asked him why he was peeling of what appeared to be a perfectly acceptable subfloor substitute. His answer was simple:

"Whatever ain't there in the first place will probably f*ck up on you later and you'll be paying me again to fix it."

Either he was right or I had an incredibly obsessive tile guy who really has no business being in business.

AJS.

Vinyl flooring over tiles?

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