thelooch wrote:
Hello, I'm building a kitchen in my basement and would like to put down
peel and stick vinyl tiles for the floor. I pulled out the old carpet
which was glued down, and it came off fairly easy. However, there is a
layer of glue on top of the concrete which is not easy to remove. It's
about 1mm thick. I bought a 14" floor scraper which isn't good for
taking all the glue off the concrete, but it does a good job of
knocking the ridges off the glue so I'm left with a smooth surface of
old glue on concrete.


I feel your pain. Last summer I finished the flooring job from Hell
at our cabin in Flagstaff. Wife said the nasty old carpet in the hall,
bathroom, and kitchen had to go, replace it with peel and stick tile.
First layer, 20 year old carpet, stapled down, nothing easy like
tack strips. Second layer, some nasty industrial-looking carpet
tile. Of course, the carpet tile was old enough that when you
pulled it up, the glue and part of the backing foam stayed stuck
to the floor. Under the carpet tile, a layer of old linoleum tiles.
Decided to leave the old tiles there. Several weekends of back-
breaking labor scraping of the foam/glue leftovers from the carpet
tile. Filled in any gouges or low spots in the old tile, sanded
down any high spots. We bought the thickest peel-and-stick
tile we could find, there were 2 or 3 different grades, figured the
thicker tile would not telegraph the irregularities underneath as
much as a thinner tile.

After 6 months, still looks good. Our application was a weekend/
summer cabin, didn't care if it wasn't perfect, so I scraped and
leveled it the best I could, and let it go at that. Tile sticks just
fine. I would probably have the same attitude about a basement
apartment, YMMV.

Jerry