Another challenging yet enjoyable job I finished in York. The homeowner had a small entrance hall, where the floor was finished with decorative vinyl. The only problem they found that they couldn’t clean this area properly. Doesn’t matter how they cleaned it or mopped it, the floor always looked dirty. So the decision was made, and they wanted tiles instead of the lino.
The job didn’t look too complicated. There were two old layers of lino to pull up and another layer of thin vinyl tiles to break up. I wanted to go down until I found a solid enough surface to lay the tiles onto. When I started breaking up the vinyl tiles – as an extra precaution – I kept wetting the area and wore an FFP3 mask just in case it would have contained any asbestos. The owners recalled that this vinyl tile was laid like 10-15 years ago, so it shouldn’t contain any dangerous materials, but it is better to be safe than sorry.
Once I reached the concrete surface, I cleaned everything up (vinyl tiles went to a separate bag, tied off) and prepared the surface for the tiles. Before I would mix up some adhesive, I had to set out the tiles. I started from the room end, marked the middle of the door opening and started to set out the tiles. I made a lot of measurements and small cuts. I didn’t have a lot of spare tiles, so I had to be careful not to make mistakes. Plus, there were a few angles around corners, so I had to make sure that the tiles followed the edges nicely.
When I had everything set out, I lifted the tiles back and started mixing some adhesive. Luckily the base concrete surface was quite smooth, even and level, so it wasn’t too difficult to get tiles matching up nicely. Normally I would have used tile spacers, but this time it was only a few tiles to lay down, so I just freestyled the work. I finished laying all tiles in less than an hour and that was the end of the first day for me. Cleaned and packed up and came back a day later to do the grouting.
Before grouting, I cleaned the tiles, made sure there were no adhesive left around the edges and joints, and wiped the surface clean. I mixed up some grout and got to work. I used my soft filler knife and my grouting float to get the mix into the joints. I worked my way forward nicely and slowly, and I only grouted up a few tiles at a time. I wiped off the excess with a sponge and moved forward. Once the mix started setting, I went back and wiped several times the tiles with a wet sponge to make sure I had all the excess cleaned off. Nothing is worse than going back the next day just to find a little grout haze over your new tiles.
I finished with the grouting just a little over an hour. While I cleaned up my tools and buckets, I let the mix dry further, and before I would have left, I wiped the tiles one more time. The homeowners were really happy with the job, and I was satisfied as well. Packed up my gear, and I was on to the next job.
Screw it! 