The self-adhesive linoleum floor tiles make your flooring projects easy and quick, but any sticky residue left behind if you remove your tiles in favor of a distinctive kind of flooring will be a messy eyesore. It is best to avert any harsh chemicals and abrasive cleaners while removing any adhesives. If the subfloor is natural wood then you need to hire a professional to ensure that the original floors are not damaged during your removal process. With a little time & elbow grease, your flooring in the real estate investment can be the eye-appealing floor by covering it was designed to be.
Steps And Items Needed To Remove Vinyl Tile Adhesive From Linoleum
If you want to remove vinyl tile adhesive from linoleum then you just need to collect all the required items and follow all the given steps carefully. Here is the list of required items and steps for this process:
Things Needed
- Plastic Bucket
- Clean Cloth Or Soft Mop
- Putty Knife Or Long-Handled Garden Edger
- Citrus Solvent (Optional)
Steps For This Process
- First of all, you need to fill your plastic bucket with hot water from your home water tap. Do not use the boiling water otherwise you will risk harming your hands and your feet during your removal process. You just need to pour enough water to cover near about a 5-by-5-foot section of your flooring. Now you need to allow your water to penetrate your linoleum adhesive for at least 20 minutes.
- Next you need to simply wipe up your soggy stick-on glue with your clean cloth or soft mop. Now you need to rinse your cloth or mop with the help of clean water each time you wipe your floor surface. Otherwise, you will easily risk spreading the adhesive back onto your floor again. Now you need to repeat your hot water application and continue mopping until you've covered your entire floor area.
- The next thing is to scrape any leftover glue, this should still be damp, with the help of a putty knife or you can also use a long-handled garden edger but you need to take care not to gouge or scrape your subfloor with the help of your scraping tool. If your subfloor is made from concrete then you need to scrape with more abandon. Next, you need to add more warm water to your sticky floor surface if it gets dry while you are scraping it.
- After that, you need to add a small amount of your citrus solvent to the warm water if water alone isn't able to remove the linoleum adhesive. The citrus solvent is easily available at most hardware stores and isn't damaging as long as you follow your mixing instructions on your bottle. Apply the water and solvent mixture to your floor where you see or feel any remaining adhesive. Finally, you need to scrape with the help of a putty knife or garden edger to remove the applied glue.
Tip And Warning
- Tip: You may need to rent a heat gun to soften stick-on tile glue that is unaffected by the warm water. Follow the manufacturer's guidance for using the heat gun.
- Warning: If your linoleum was installed before the era of 1978 then you need to hire a professional to test that if your flooring contains asbestos. You need to know that don't try to scrape or remove any asbestos without professional guidance.