Good Evening,
I had two layers of vinyl and one layer of what I think was linoleum in the front hallway. It was chipped around the edges where someone had obviously had a go at getting it up. When I moved in there was this horrible rubber mat coconut coir thing in there.
I haven't done anything to it in the 5 years I've lived here but I wanted to tile it. So I used a heat gun to get the vinyl up, and the lino. But the lino was stuck down with this black tar stuff. I don't know if it's mastic or not because from what I can see mastic comes off in bits like glue? and this only gets sticky when it's hot, like tar. It's odd stuff because it seems like it was put down like a liquid rather than adhesive on the back of the tiles, because it wasn't fully covering the outside edge of the room, but at the same time there's no swirl in it so whoever put it down got 100% coverage with something that cools and sets solid pretty quick!
Anyway, I used Blue Bear Mastic Remover. It did OK, made an almighty mess but hey ho, I think it softened the top layer up but they say mop up afterwards, which was a big no-no nightmare it just seems to spread it. If I mopped it until it was all gone I think I'd be there a month non-stop.
I let it dry and bought a floor scraper, results of which in the photo. It does ok but it's a lot of work and as the floors a bit uneven it leaves dips and hollows.
My question is: can I tile directly over this? The black stuff has to be scraped off it doesn't exactly come off but it is soft and supple and leaves a residue on your feet/socks.
If I can't, can I put a primer over it and tile over that? If so what primer?
Also, that jug you see in the photo is Tar Remover from Chemiphase, from the smell of it I think it's just ridiculously expensive diesel x) I tried it, it ... I dunno, it might act as a bit of a solvent but I couldn't really tell the difference between it and just plain water to be honest.
I had two layers of vinyl and one layer of what I think was linoleum in the front hallway. It was chipped around the edges where someone had obviously had a go at getting it up. When I moved in there was this horrible rubber mat coconut coir thing in there.
I haven't done anything to it in the 5 years I've lived here but I wanted to tile it. So I used a heat gun to get the vinyl up, and the lino. But the lino was stuck down with this black tar stuff. I don't know if it's mastic or not because from what I can see mastic comes off in bits like glue? and this only gets sticky when it's hot, like tar. It's odd stuff because it seems like it was put down like a liquid rather than adhesive on the back of the tiles, because it wasn't fully covering the outside edge of the room, but at the same time there's no swirl in it so whoever put it down got 100% coverage with something that cools and sets solid pretty quick!
Anyway, I used Blue Bear Mastic Remover. It did OK, made an almighty mess but hey ho, I think it softened the top layer up but they say mop up afterwards, which was a big no-no nightmare it just seems to spread it. If I mopped it until it was all gone I think I'd be there a month non-stop.
I let it dry and bought a floor scraper, results of which in the photo. It does ok but it's a lot of work and as the floors a bit uneven it leaves dips and hollows.
My question is: can I tile directly over this? The black stuff has to be scraped off it doesn't exactly come off but it is soft and supple and leaves a residue on your feet/socks.
If I can't, can I put a primer over it and tile over that? If so what primer?
Also, that jug you see in the photo is Tar Remover from Chemiphase, from the smell of it I think it's just ridiculously expensive diesel x) I tried it, it ... I dunno, it might act as a bit of a solvent but I couldn't really tell the difference between it and just plain water to be honest.