I’m doing some work on a bedroom. The woman who owned the house before us told us that there’s parquet underneath the wall-to-wall. So I was going to pull up the carpet and paint. However, her idea of “parquet” is fake-woodgrain tile. It’s put down with a tar- or creosote-based adhesive.
Does anyone have any experience dissolving this stuff? It looks like hardwood underneath it. If I could get rid of most of the adhesive, a little sanding and urethane might make it good as new.
Edit: it’s not hardwood – the only room in the house without hardwood. The closet in this room has a hardwood floor. I may still need adhesive to get the tile up, though.
Any suggestions what to put down? No carpet; we’re getting rid of all the carpet in an effort to keep allergies somewhat at bay. I’ll cast a vote for hardwood or Pergo, but that might be costly. Has anyone done a bedroom in tile or linoleum?
I wouldn’t recommend trying to dissolve the adhesive. In the first place, I don’t think you’ll succeed; in the second place, it can create a fire hazard and the fumes can hurt you.
Professional floor refinishers have machines that take up that kind of gunk. You might call someone who refinishes wood floors and discuss the problem with them. You may even be able to rent such a machine. Is the subfloor solid softwood (pine) planks, or is it plywood? If it’s pine, you may be able to refinish it and end up with a beautiful floor.
Thanks for the pointers, Em and Jerry. I think I’ll probably just take up the damaged tiles – several appear to have melted, probably from having cigarrettes dropped on carpet on them – plane everything out, and put (If I can convince my wife) hardwood over it all.
First of all, if there is no wonderful old original flooring underneath, why not just take up the sub-floor with the glue on it and put down new sub flooring?
You can get adhesive disolvers, but it’s heavy duty stuff to work around.
Forget the Pergo or anyother fake wood floor. That stuff just won’t cut it in a house with the real thing in the other rooms. It’ll look too out of place.
If there is a local manufacturer of real wood flooring you can get the best price there and put down the real stuff for a decent price. We did that a couple of years ago and paid $2.50 sq ft for tavern grade oak prefinished flooring! All because they made the floor there and could sell it much cheaper.
You could of course do tile(real or vinyl) or, for the price of real tile you could do REAL linoleum. It is great, any scuffs over the years are easily repaired since the real thing has color all the way through, is great in a house with allergy sufferers, is “green” as in earth friendly, and will last for years. The real linoleum in our dining room has lasted since 1939 and still looks great.
Check it out here-
Can you tell that my house and it’s restoration is my other obsession?
Oh NO, it just clicked in… The creosote like adhesive. …When were these tiles put down??? what is the age of the house???
It is very likely that you have asbestos tiles, from the description of the “glue”. Don’t pull them up!!! Leave them alone. There is no health risk from them as long as you don’t do stuff like pulling them up. That could release fibers which can be breathed and then it 's not a good situation.
You would need an asbestos abatement crew to remove the floor if it is asbestos tiles.
We have asbestos tile at work which crews are in the process of “abateing”…it’s a major undertaking. So far our lab has not been done, and I’m glad, since it is taking months to do a single floor at work (admittedly much larger than a bedroom, but still).
You might try a bamboo wood floor. It’s ply, but the top layer is bamboo and looks kind of nice. Cheaper than other hardwood flooring too. I just saw one in a $400K house. Looked great and has a lighter feeling than oak, but wears just as good or better. http://www.fastfloors.com/article_79/Bamboo-Flooring-Features-and-Benefits.htm
I’ll cast a vote for hardwood or Pergo, but that might be costly. Has anyone done a bedroom in tile or linoleum?
I don’t like Pergo/plastic fake wood floor covering. And, a bedroom needs something besides tile or vynal to make it look warm.
ACK (to quote Bill the Cat), you’re absolutely right. The feel like asbestos, and the house was built in 1965, and had an asbestos roof. It just didn’t occur to me that they were original, plus there are a couple of places where it looks as though they’ve gotten hot and melted, but they’re the real article.
I’ve ordered some oak flooring. I’ll be painting in a couple of weeks, then flooring. Any advice? I’ll be chipping out the high points and filling in the places where bits of tile are missing. Other than that, the floor’s extremely flat and solid. Any other potential things that could trip me up?
