Shopsmith Forums

Greetings fellow sawdust makers,

A while back you were kind enough to share your ideas on a wood flooring in the kitchen. Thanks for your help. My kitchen project is progressing in fits and starts, lots is getting done, but the floor is still our old vinyl. A new complication has presented itself. I have 3 layers of vinyl in my kitchen. First layer was put down in 1979 by the builder, right onto the plywood subfloor. The first owner of the house added an underlayment and new vinyl some time after that. In the early 2000s we added another underlayment and new layer of vinyl. It's now 3/4" thick. The thought was to pull it all up and put real wood flooring down. It turns out the first layer of vinyl is made with an asbestos backing and would require a special hazardous material crew to remove it. So I'm back where I started, looking to add yet another layer of...vinyl.

There is a relatively new product called LVP or Luxury Vinyl Plank, which looks like wood but is waterproof. Very nice looking stuff. Fairly easy to install. Anybody here have experience with it in their own home? Thanks for your thoughts.

Tom

I have it my my basement. Many different brands and qualities. My wife picked this one out.

I like it a lot. The color is off because of the lighting.

algale wrote:I have it my my basement. Many different brands and qualities. My wife picked this one out. I like it a lot. The color is off because of the lighting.

Thanks Al, looks great! Is yours the glue-down or the lock-together type? Did you install it yourself?

Not glued down. Locked together. The pros did it.

About 10 years before this, I had installed an engineered hardwood floor that locked in place. It got destroyed when we had some burst pipes that flooded the basement. My wife didn't want that again so we went with the LVP. I was skeptical, but I really like it, in some ways more than the engineered hard wood.

The only negative I would give it is that objects left in one spot a long time will leave an impression in the flooring (chair feet, for example). So far, however, the vinyl has sprung back after a couple of days.

There is also ceramic tile that looks just like wood. Comes in planks instead of tile squares. Also there is now a method where they lay down a thin layer of self leveling concrete and the color and finish applied to it to look just like wood.

One thing with the concrete your asbestos tile would be sealed in.

Until you do something I would not mess with floor without a mask and insuring any asbestos isn't sloffed off that may be come airborne when you family enters the house.

Personally I would want it out of my house!

Ed in Tampa wrote:Personally I would want it out of my house!

Me too Ed. I am going to look into it, but it takes a trained crew in hazmat suits, bound to be expensive.

The stuff is everywhere. I guess all vinyl and linoleum up until the early 1980s had the asbestos backing. It has been pronounced safe to leave it in place or covered with another floor.

I've done a little reading on mesothelioma and asbestiosis. They say it takes very heavy exposure to asbestos all day long over a period of many years to get it. Shipyard workers, miners, and the like have high rates of the disease.

I had to put my two cents in here since I am in the water and fire restoration business. Leave the asbestos removal to the professionals! The last thing you want to do is start busting out those old 9x9 tiles and exposing the entire house and everyone in it. It can be expensive but it is one of those things where you are better off spending the money instead of finding some handyman "who knows what he's doing" or removing it yourself and suffering the consequences later on.