Thursday, October 9, 2008

1.I live in a garden condo built in 1939 that has to conform to the Old Town Alexandria architectural review board. The concrete front porches and steps were covered with glued-down, indoor-outdoor carpet. It is splitting and coming up in places. Can the carpet be removed and a more appropriate covering applied? I am afraid we have destroyed the surface for any other application. Heavy-duty paint or slate or even brick would be so much better than the indoor-outdoor carpet.

Alexandria

Paul Cain, who answers technical questions for the W.W. Henry Co., which makes carpet adhesives, suggests pulling up the carpet and grinding off the adhesive residue so that you have a clean base for another kind of covering.

There are products that dissolve the kind of adhesive used for indoor-outdoor carpet. But concrete is porous, so you won't be able to remove all of the residue, and it will leach out and ruin whatever you install later.

To remove the adhesive mechanically, use a seven-inch grinder with a diamond cup and a shroud connected to a vacuum. Home centers and tool companies rent out these.

A decorative concrete company could prep the surface and install a thin concrete resurfacing material, which would be less slick than paint. It could be tinted or even embossed to resemble brick or stone. Or a tile-setter or mason could prep the surface and install thin brick tiles, which are just a half-inch thick. You'd need something thin to avoid an awkward height change at the door.

2.We have a small kitchen that is in need of a new vinyl floor. The catch is the refrigerator: For reasons that are complicated, it can be moved within the kitchen but not out of it while we install new flooring. We've found a vinyl tile that we want to use. Should we pull up the old flooring or put the new on top of it?

Silver Spring

It depends on the kind of vinyl now on the floor. If it's firm and intact, you can probably install the new tiles directly on it. If the old flooring has texture, fill the voids first by troweling on an embossing leveler, or the texture will eventually telegraph through into the new tiles.

However, if your existing vinyl is loose or damaged, you should remove it or cover it. If it was made before 1972, it could contain asbestos, so have it tested before you start ripping it up. Good instructions on how to get the test and ensure safe removal are available by searching under "vinyl flooring" at the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency's Web site, http://www.pscleanair.org.

If you opt to leave loose flooring in place, cover it with quarter-inch-thick underlayment-quality plywood, then install the new flooring. Underlayment-quality plywood doesn't have interior voids, so it remains firm wherever a chair leg might press down. Don't use particleboard underlayment in a kitchen because the material will swell if it gets wet.