Linoleum Glue Mess
I’ve searched the internet and am not convinced by the advice I found for removing the glue left by 2 layers of linoleum. One layer of glue is hard and has the black tar like paper residue, the other linoleum glue layer is soft like bubblegum and is the bigger nightmare. How the heck am…
I’ve searched the internet and am not convinced by the advice I found for removing the glue left by 2 layers of linoleum. One layer of glue is hard and has the black tar like paper residue, the other linoleum glue layer is soft like bubblegum and is the bigger nightmare. How the heck am I going to get this off a whole flight of wood stairs? Thanks for any advice.
As I indicated earlier, the black stuff is most likely asbestos and you should get it tested. Every time we see black mastic and have it tested it has always come back as asbestos. Sanding this off is not a good idea… If you need someone to test it, contact me.
we had linoleum covered wood floors that looked worse than that.
the sander took it right off. no other technique was necessary.
not a trace left.
your results may vary.
I recommend the sander. We helped friends refinish the floors of the carriage house, and that’s exactly what they looked like before sanding. You’re going to need 4 times the normal amount of sheets, and it’s a physical job.
I would stop everything you are doing and get the glue checked for asbestos.
Try boiling water. Sounds strange, but boiling water will remove certain kind of old black mastic from wood floors. I did this with 1930s-era linoleum mastic and it just melted off. Very messy — you’ll need lots of old towels to soak up the mess — but the results were beautiful. (You’ll find discussion of this method on other restoration sites.) Please post your results. I’m curious to see what works for you.
Try some WD-40. I’ve never used it to remove flooring adhesive, but it’s worked great on other sticky stuff.
Our floor refinishers hand sanded the stairs. Don’t know if there was black glue on them since I was at work when it came off. They look beautiful.
There weren’t tiles, just sheets of linoleum. But before the current linoleum, it looks like there had been an older linoleum which probably was the asbestos stuff.
The black stuff might have asbestos in it… What size were the tiles?