Let me tell you the tale of my kitchen floor. 15 years ago I bought this mobile home. When I walked into the place I hated it! I really did! It had horrific wallpaper all over the place. My first instinct was I hated the dividing wall between the living room and kitchen and wanted to knock it down. Walked around into the corner and realized that wasn't possible. But decided that the price was right (enough) and it would work. So I bought it.
When it was mine I finally removed a floor mat that had been sitting in front of the fridge to find, to my horror, a badly patched section of linoleum flooring. Fuckers! Back then I didn't have squat for money. Was busy raising 3 kids so financing home improvement projects wasn't high on my list of priorities. So for years and years I kept a mat over that spot. And over those years that spot turned into a crack that finally extended almost the entire width of my kitchen. So had rugs. And gorilla tape (extra strong tape, stronger that duct tape!) to keep it from cracking even worse. Sort of helped.
Then came the day when the kids were all grown and I wanted to sell the house and be freer with my life options. And it was long past time to deal with the floor. I'd always planned to fix it over the years but never got around to it. There was always something more important for money/resources to go to. Now the time had come if I wanted to sell it. Who wants a house with a cracked up kitchen floor? Not me!
So here's the plan. Fix the existing floor by patching it so that it qualifies as a waterproof barrier. THEN put a new floor down on top of that. I plan to put in a floating linoleum floor. Kind of like click flooring but instead of the "click" it has a strip of glue so each piece adheres to the next instead of the floor. So when I'm done with this it'll be kind of a double waterproof floor, at least up to the cupboard edges and then single underneath. I'm taking pictures as I go to prove to any inspector, if there is one, that my house is up to code under the new floor.
My mobile home was built in an interesting way. Maybe they all are. Probably. Anyway, they slap down the floor and then set walls and cupboards on top of it. From what the MH supply company tells me, I'm supposed to have a waterproof barrier to be up to code. So having this big old crack in the kitchen floor is a problem! And cutting the crappy linoleum away from the edges of the cupboards would negate any waterproof barrier qualities it has. So I decided to google how to repair a linoleum floor and ta-da! There was a fix and it didn't look to hard! It left me feeling like an idiot for not doing this years ago too. Bleah.
It was rather fun getting the materials! Told the guys at Menards that I needed a 1 ft X 12 ft strip of their cheapest linoleum. They looked at me funny. I told them it was just a patch and didn't need to be pretty. Believe me, it isn't! Ran all over the place looking for a heat gun. No one seemed to know where they had them but all were sure they had them. Finally found them over by paint supplies. Just so you know for future reference.
I got adhesive and seam sealer. I got a new box cutter (kind of excited about that! I like knives!) I got some leather gloves since I couldn't find "heat resistant" gloves. (They worked just fine)
That's the back story to my day today. Today I started the project. First I removed all the rugs. And then it was time to remove the gorilla tape.
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| this is the floor with gorilla tape on it |
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| the gorilla tape took layers off the flooring underneath and tore the flooring off to the side in a couple spots |
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| here's the original square that I inherited with the house |
The instructions said to lay the patch down and cut along it to create a perfect template. This sound easy right? Weirdly, making that first cut was an emotional bitch! I felt strangely traumatized cutting into my floor! It freaked me out! But I dug deep and I did it. It had to be done!
And I had to cut and cut and cut till my hands hurt! Probably 10 ft long on 2 side and cutting thru 2 pieces of linoleum so had to apply some pressure. Awkward and not as easy as I thought it would be!
The glue was so bad under most of it that it lifted off quite easily. I did need the heat gun & putty knife for the square portion the previous owner had glued on. That heat gun was rather cool! The adhesive didn't put up much of a fight once that was applied!
It already looked better just getting that crappy linoleum off! I was feeling pretty good at this point. My neck was also hurting and I was also sick of crawling around on the floor, but that was beside the point.
Then fun times with glue began! It seemed so logical and simple in the instructions! In reality, HOLY SHIT is that stuff sticky and icky!!! Instructions say that if some of the adhesive oozes out onto the floor to just wipe it up with a paper towel. What it does not tell you is that your fingers will be sticky from said glue and the paper towel will stick to said sticky fingers and as you work your fingers will become a literal gluey, sticky papery disaster area! It also says to put down some wax paper and use a seam roller to smooth the seams. Well, I got the bright idea to save a few pennies and use my granite rolling pin as a seam roller. I may have cost myself a granite rolling pin with that brilliant judgement call! Here's what REALLY happens! You put down the wax paper and start rolling. The wax paper promptly wraps itself around your rolling pin and glue squeezes out and you're wiping and then trying to get the paper off your gluey fingers and then you're taking your gluey papered hands and grabbing your sticky box cutter to trim the floor because, guess what? Linoleum "RELAXES"!! Ken told me this after I bitched about having to re-trim the damned edges TWICE during the gluing process. So now I have bits of linoleum stuck to my papered gluey fingers. And my rolling pin isn't faring a lot better!
I pushed on thru. I had to pause regularly to pry the glue/paper/linoleum off my fingers. Then go reapply. Finally it was glued down and flush with the existing floor! Bowing to applause here! Thank you! Thank you very much!!
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| See? I told you it wasn't pretty! |
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| The bags are rock salt in ziplocs to put a little weight on certain areas that weren't committed to staying put |
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| I'd be in big trouble if this had to be pretty. What you can't see is that there is some smeary glue stuff around the edges that I'm hoping I can get off later for a professional finish. If I can't? Pfft! It's going to be hidden under a new floor in another month anyway! |
Now I have peeled most of the adhesive off my hands. The rest will wear off in time. I'm almost recovered from crawling around on my floor for hours. Almost. I get a 24 hr vacation now! WOOT WOOT!! I'm going to go off and wallow in my DIY Queen glory now. TTFN!
It's now Monday night (that was Sat) and I've just finished cutting and pasting the last piece in. Let it set up for 24 hrs then seal all the seams and it's waterproof! I'm so happy it's all cut and in now. The rest is cake!
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| fridge is pulled out and time to cut the last piece! |
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| DONE! And I even pattern matched :) |
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