Can I set tile on top of vinyl flooring?

One of the most important things in a good installation is a stable substrate. You can not set tile directly on top of vinyl flooring.

You can how ever set tile on top of a vinyl floor once the following steps are put in place. We will be installing a cement board over the top of the old vinyl floor. The first thing we need to do is to peel off the old vinyl. If on top of concrete, use a dry wall knife and cut through the caulking around the perimeter. Once that is done, cut through the vinyl in long strips. Now with your hand , or with the knife pull up as best as you can the top layer of the vinyl. More likely than not, there will remain part of the vinyl still attached to the concrete. In order to remove what is still attached to the concrete take a 4" scraper and scrape of the rest of the stuff still stuck to the floor. Sweep clean and your now ready to snap some lines for your layout.

The other application is to install tile over vinyl on top of a plywood sub floor. Look around and pull up as much as you can where the vinyl is lose and not attached to what ever is underneath it. You won't need to spend a lot of effort trying to remove the vinyl that is stuck well. Once the loose stuff is removed sweep it up well. Now take 1/4" cement backer board and cut it to overlay the existing floor. I spend the time to cut and fit the entire floor before moving on/. Once you have all the pieces cut and laying there unattached we can move onto the nest step. Now remove the wonder board out of the area. Make sure to some how know where all the pieces will go back at.

Mix some multi purpose thin set adhesive in your bucket and let it sit undisturbed for about ten minutes. Mix it fairly loose in this particular application. after letting it sit remix it one more time. We will now take a 3/16th" v notch trowel and start at the far end of the pre paired floor and smear enough thin set to cover the area of your first row of already cut wonder board. Make sure this is keyed in well on a dust free floor. Cover it as uniformly as possible. Now take the appropriate pieces and lay them down on top of the thin set without disturbing the evenly spread mud. What I mean by this is to not drag the board over the top. Lay it on top nicely. Once the mud is covered, now step onto the wonder board and with your body weight press the board into the mud and try to cover as much area as you can. Once you have done that we will now "surf" the board further into place. What I mean by surfing is to try and shimmy the board back and forth with your legs and body weight . What we are trying to accomplish here is to move the board around some , trying to rub it into the thin set as well as we can to spread the glue to the bottom of the board/substrate to get the best bond possible.

Depending on how fast you can move along you can proceed onto the next row and complete this step in the entire room. Only do this if your area is small enough that you can surf the pieces into place and then come back a nail/ screw it off before the mud starts to harden.
You now need to affix the board tight to the floor with fasteners. You can use screws and screw it off or you can chose to nail it off. There are specific screws sold to attach cement board at your local home improvement store if you want to screw if off. I like to use galvanized roofing barbs and nail it off by hand . Well I actually use an air compressor and a roofing gun. You can certainty do it by hand though. Make sure you use galvanized roofing barbs . The galvanized will keep the fasteners from rusting in the future.

You will want to sew in the edges with fasteners about every 3" around all the edges of each piece of board and then uniformly attach it every 6-8" in the field.

Let it dry over night if you can afford the time.

Once that is done it's ready to tile.