Q: We have a small block home on a river in Michigan. The kitchen/ bedroom/bathroom were built on a concrete slab and the living room is over the walkout basement. We do not have air conditioning.
After removing many layers of flooring from the living room, I found a nice hardwood floor but it is an inch lower than the cement slab which is covered with asbestos tile. Most of those tiles have 1/8th of an inch gap surrounding each tile. I would rather not remove the tile because it was put down with tar and was awful to remove from the hardwood. (In fact I still have more tar to remove from the wood, any ideas?) I would really like to have cork to warm up and soften the floor, but read your warnings about cork in wet areas, worry about the gaps in the tile and the big difference in floor surfaces. I thought it would also be a good idea to have some ceramic tile at the door way because of the moisture and traffic there.
Do you have any suggestions?
Thank you,
Valerie
A: The tar like substance you are running into is most likely an adhesive that is known as black cutback adhesive. The good news here is that there are several specially formulated citrus based solvents which will remove the cutback without any other treatments (though you will need to use a scraped to peel the cutback off). These solvents revert the adhesive back to a more liquid or paste like state.
Your best bet would be to remove the tiles, which you can pop off the floor with a 2″ x 4″ frame filled with a block of dry ice. 15 seconds over a tile then pop it with a hammer and it will come right up. Keep in mind dry ice is pure carbon dioxide so you MUST be working in a well vented area.
If you wish to leave the tiles in place, you will need to do a bit of fill work. First off determine how deep these gaps between tiles are, then fill with a combination of Portland cement based sack and patch followed by some self leveler to ensure the entire floor is nice and flat. Keep in mind you can only do this is all of the tiles are undamaged (save for something like scratches) and none of the tiles are loose.
Regardless of which route you take ensure you use a moisture barrier before installing your floor as this will be a great safe guard and it is required in the areas where you are installing over concrete.
Now to take care of that height difference I would suggest using a stair nosing as a lip, similar to what you would do with a sunk in living room, then resume flooring. For cork, this usually means using a clear grade natural maple nosing as they are the most neutral wood nosing you will be able to get. Then stain it to match color. Your other option here would be to use a painted nosing or a metal nosing (brushed aluminum for instance) which will give you a bit more of the modern commercial look.
