PSA: Watch out for old tile adhesive under that 'easy' vinyl plank job

I mean, I just got burned by this last week. A client in Springfield wanted vinyl plank over their old kitchen floor. They said the old tile was gone, just some adhesive left, no big deal. I figured a quick scrape and we'd be good. Wrong. This stuff was like concrete, maybe some old cutback mastic. My floor scraper just bounced off. I tried a 4-inch razor scraper, then a heat gun, then a rented floor grinder. The grinder gummed up every two feet. What should have been a half-day prep turned into three full days of just getting the subfloor flat. I'm talking 30 hours of work for a 200 square foot area. Has anyone else found a better way to deal with that rock-hard black adhesive from the 70s?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_nina1mo ago

Ugh, that sounds brutal. But honestly, a floor grinder should have worked if you had the right attachment. That black cutback is the worst. You need a diamond cup wheel on that grinder, not just the sanding disc it comes with. The diamond teeth chew right through the hard stuff without gumming up. Still a dusty, awful job, but it cuts the time way down.

lane.mason1mo ago

Yeah, the diamond cup wheel is the move like the_nina said. The real kicker is checking if that black gunk has asbestos before you even turn a grinder on. That changes the whole game.