On 8 Mar 2010 at 17:42, Ray Arachelian wrote:
There was a lot of weird stuff with this house. A few
years ago, the
wooden floor tiles in another area started to peel off, they turned
out to be humidity sensitive, and they were very thin - maybe 1/4th
inch or something glued to each other in patterns. There was no wood
underneath them as you'd expect. Instead, someone installed them
ontop of a previous vinyl floor. So we paid a guy to redo it, and
it's much better now. So maybe this will turn out that way also...
But I'll keep scraping around the grout and wiggling when I'm over the
flu and see if I can pry one off.
I've got an ugly feeling that your tiles were simply attached with
mastic to an existing vinyl floor. I've laid ceramic tile over vinyl-
-but glued and screwed (to the subfloor) a layer of concrete backer
board, then set the tile in thinset mortar the regular way. It
worked for me (still looks great after nearly 20 years), because the
hardwood flooring in adjacent areas was bringing the floor level up
by 3/4" anyway. If your tile is glued to the vinyl, the permanent
fix is to take everything up and start over.
I guess I'm lucky that most of the idiot DIY moves in my house were
electrical and plumbing-related.
--Chuck