Tiling over marley vinyl tiles ?

[Lloydy]

Now I've retired my wife is making noises about getting some work done around the house, and the kitchen floor is now top of her list, once I've done that then I can go and play with my competition 4x4 and fit a new engine in that!

The room is about 20 feet square with a peninsula kitchen unit going into the centre of the room. I don't want to remove the units so I'm prepared to remove the kick boards and tile up to them. There's also 5 doors on 3 different walls so access across parts of the floor is pretty much essential, so I need a quick setting fix.

The big problem is that the floor is covered with 12"x12" vinyl Marley tiles, although they have been covered with cusionfloor for most of their 35 year life. So the Marley tiles are in good shape and all stuck down perfectly.

I've searched the forums here and found these topics -

http://www.tilersforums.co.uk/tile-a...nyl-tiles.html


tiling onto vinyl tiles


lino tiles, tile over or remove?


http://www.tilersforums.co.uk/tile-a...en-dilema.html

that indicates that it is ok to tile on top of the vinyl tiles in most circumstances. Is this still good information ?

We've looked at some porcelein tiles that are 45 x 45 cm ( satin finish Pietra tiles at Homebase, £19 for a pack of 5 )
Would these be ok, or would a smaller tile, maybe a ceramic tile, be a better choice? We like the look of traditional quarry tiles, and as it's a 200 year old house they would look right, perhaps the thicker and smaller tile would be better?

Someone I spoke to mentioned 'floating' the tiles on something to seperate them, which relies ( I think ) on the tiles becoming a structure in themselves. This doesn't seem like a good idea in what is essentially a U shaped room ?

I've tiled before, done the bathroom and shower, and kitchen splashback. It's not my favourite job but I'm careful and generally get it right.
This is definitely a job I want to get right because I want to do it once!

Thanks.

[Rich]

Hi
When tiling a floor it is almost always best to remove any coverings off of the floor before hand. I wouldnt tile over the existing coverings if it was down to me. What is under the vinyl tiles? Is it a screeded floor? If so you would be much better off removing the flooring, making sure the screed is in good shape and tiling over this.

As for the size of the tiles, it is really down to you. You should pick a tile that you like the look of.

[Lloydy]

The floor is solid concrete, probably about 10" thick over hardcore and on top of very hard clay. I put the floor down many years ago, it's well drained on the clay and there's membrane so the floor is bone dry and dead level.

The same floor extends into the laundry room and toilet that are off the kitchen, but they are bare concrete, with cushionfloor, and will be tiled at the same time.

[mikethetile]

wont you have a height difference between the different areas

[Rich]

In that case I would say take the existing flooring up.
The concrete will be about as good a substrate you can get, it would be a shame to take a risk by tiling over the vinyl for the sake of removing it.

It will mean a little bit more work but as you said you only want to do this once. Do it once and do it right

[Lloydy]

wont you have a height difference between the different areas

I can get away with that by 'loosing' the slight difference in a doorway through an 18 inch thick wall, and nearly every room in this house has a different floor level, so that's no problem.

[diamondtiling]

I would lift the marleys, a large heavy duty bully scraper will make the job easy.