Polished timber floor in kitchen

[brettsyoung]

I'm preparing to sand and reseal the timber floors in the living area and main bedroom. There is hideous vinyl over the top of timber in the kitchen. I would like to strip the vinyl and sand and polish the floor, but my brother thinks the glue would be too hard to remove easily, and that timber floors are too slippery in the kitchen anyway. I've seen plenty of polished timber floors in the reno mags etc but is he essentially right? My kitchen decor was based on timber floors so I want to be sure before I commit one way or the other.

thanks, Brett

[Gooner]

Hello Brett.

I recently did my floors and wrote a long post about it. You can find it here https://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=61344

I had some vinyl in some areas of the house as well as tiles and carpet. The vinyl was the hardest to remove, but did not involve removing any adhesive. You mention that the glue will be difficult to remove. It will be. However, if it was laid properly, the vinyl should be glued on top of a wooden board base which would be stapled to your timber floors. Therefore you should be able to rip out the vinyl along with the wooden underlay. If your vinyl has been directly glued onto your timber floorboards then I would say you have a difficult job ahead.

When I removed the vinyl, I simply ripped it out along with the wooden base. This left me with thousands of difficult to remove staples, but no glue.

I have read many articles in forums about people's experience in removing the adhesive holding the vinyl to the floor. I am sure you can find lots of information if you find that your vinyl is indeed glued directly onto your floorboards.

We currently have vinyl in our kitchen and adjoining dining area. My wife wanted polished floorboards in these rooms too, but I vetoed the idea. Despite being ugly, vinyl is very hard wearing. Our kitchen and dining area is a high traffic area in our house as it is where the rear sliding door is located and also a traffic area to get to the back rooms in the house. I know for a fact that if I had polished the boards in these rooms they would have been already significantly scratched by this stage. (Only 2 months down the track).

Therefore, I guess it depends on where your kitchen is located. If your kitchen is tucked away and all traffic is 'kitchen traffic' only, I possibly would consider polishing the floors. I don't believe that slipping is an issue. I haven't slipped on my boards yet. I would definitely lay a few mats around the place where things tend to be dropped or water spilt.

The kitchen is an area where I would defintiely use a finish that can be easily recoated later down the track. Be careful with this as some finishes, (particularly 2-pack polyurethane finishes), cannot be recoated and must be sanded back down to timber if you want to repair the floor.

That's my 2 cents.

[OBBob]

Plenty of kitchen have timber floors. Looks fantastic and is no more slippery than a lot of tiles.

[brettsyoung]

Thanks guys. Gooner I did read your post - enlightening but frightening. After reading it I considered getting a pro to do the job but have since been convinced by several mates that it's easier than it sounds. I'm not looking for a showroom finish so I'll not put in the same effort that you did. We're going up to the house to tear up carpets this weekend. I do hope you're right about the vinyl being attached to board underlay! But if not, just how hard is it to remove glue?

cheers, Brett

[Larry McCully]

Not hard, Most comercial sanding machines will sand it of using 24 grit. I dont think that the smaller hire machines are able to. They are to light. You can try painting on in small areas some paint thinners and with a paint scraper remove 90% of the glue and the machine will do the rest.

[Toymaker Len]

We have timber floors in the kitchen. They look beautiful and they are not slippery and when they are a bit worn you can just refinish them. Say once every ten years.

[Gooner]

Thanks guys. Gooner I did read your post - enlightening but frightening. After reading it I considered getting a pro to do the job but have since been convinced by several mates that it's easier than it sounds. ......

Brett, I did not mean to put people off doing the job themselves. I was just pointing out that it is a reasonably big job if doing a large area and/or many rooms. I personally would do the job myself again.

Keep in mind that I did almost our entire house. If you are just doing a kitchen area then this will be very manageable.

Let us know how you go. Be interested to hear what your thoughts are after doing the job.

[HappyHammer]

Brett,

I put in Blue Gum timber flooring throughout the living and kitchen area when we were in Sydney and it looked stunning. Never had any problem with it being slippery and we had people walking in from the pool dripping water on it, easily mopped up and generally easy to clean.

With the right finish and number of coats it will also be extremely hard wearing as said previously once every 10 years is the likely timeframe and I'd expect vinyl to be cracking up within that time too.

Go for it mate otherwise every time you look at that vinyl you'll be thinking "I wish I'd put the timber in".

HH.

[Pops]

Hi Brett,

I'm with HappyH here. Had the same, (sort of) decision to make some time ago, kitchen floor wood or something else. Decided on timber after much thinking, of al the reasons mentioned in previous posts above.

Put in recycled Jarrah boards. Still have to do a lot of work before I am ready to sand and polish, but am expecting it to look trumps.

Best of luck.

Oh ! P.S. I have removed that thick horrible glue from floorboards before. Not a fun job. The best tool I came up with, after much mucking about and swearing was a secondhand spade, flattened and filed to a chisel edge. One big work boot pushing and I cleaned off the muck much faster than any other method I tried.

Cheers
Pops