Flooring question...

[Treibenschnell]

I'm in the process of ripping out our old, nasty single sheet vinyl flooring out of our guest bath and replacing it with nice 12x12 ceramic tile. Here's the question - I'm almost done scraping the entire floor but there is still some old adhesive residue left, should I bother trying to remove it all or just move on?

[sammm]

Remove it. They sell adhesive removal stuff (liquid).

[Treibenschnell]

Remove it. They sell adhesive removal stuff (liquid).

Will I be needing a mask as well? Or just vacate the area for a bit...

[sammm]

I don't remember the stuff I used being toxic or smelly. If there's an exhaust fan in there it can't hurt. Get a nice wide long-handle scraper too (with a razor blade like edge).

[Treibenschnell]

Cool... off to Lowe's I go...

[Treibenschnell]

Well sammmy, I've removed about 99% of the adhesive without using the liquid stuff... I just bought an extra large scraper and went to town.

When laying the tiles out, one starts in the center, correct? Or is it kosher to start against the wall and work your way out?

[channelmaniac]

Well sammmy, I've removed about 99% of the adhesive without using the liquid stuff... I just bought an extra large scraper and went to town.

When laying the tiles out, one starts in the center, correct? Or is it kosher to start against the wall and work your way out?

If you want it to look right, start in the center and work your way out. Set a line if you can to start 'em off straight. Once that's done then the rest fall into place. Well, provided you are sober and can follow a line of tiles.

[wrxmr2eater]

Depends on the room, make the focal area of the room correct, be it the center or the edge depending on the view. The rest will fall in to place.

[Dave04]

What I did on my kitchen floor was measure and find the center of the room. We then laid out a "+" of tiles from that point out to each wall without any adhesive so we could guage where things would land. Glad we did because it showed that we would have had a 1" strip of tile around the outside edge of the room. We then offset the "center" by 6" or so so that we'd have a wider edge around the room that looked nice.

Based on that, we then started laying tile.

[sammm]

we could guage where things would land. Glad we did because it showed that we would have had a 1" strip of tile

That's the way to do it. Dry fit it first so you have equal (or close to it) partial tiles where they meet the walls. Then get square and pop 2 intersecting lines.