Help please, I have found this site and have been impressed by the quality of contributions and hope someone out there will be able to help me with some advice. I want to get a vinyl or something similar laid in my kitchen, but I need some advice on prep before it is fit to for that. The floor is half concrete – from an extension and half wood- from the original build. The concrete is dry and the two levels matched up and the whole floor was pretty smooth. But because we were doing up the rest of the house and needed to move in a while ago I had to do something to improve the floor. So after the kitchen units were fitted I covered the whole of the floor with 4mm ply to give us something decent to walk on. The ply is screwed to the floorboards and screwed and glued to the concrete. I’m now ready to move to the next stage, the problem however is that the floor slopes to one corner, by about 12mm in 1.5m. (the house moved previously a long time ago but is, the structural surveyor tells me, fine now). I’d like to take this slope off – at least in part, but I am not sure of the best way to do this. I assume I should build up the corner with ply and then apply leveling compound, but is this right and if so, just what would you recommend esp what sort of leveling compound? And should it be one coat or two? Also do I need to do the whole floor, or will it be ok to do just enough to take the slope off and level it with the rest of the floor? As I said above any help gratefully received. Thanks
Hi, welcome. You can build up with plywood in steps. Then smooth the edges off with a repair compound (ardex 45) and then a full skim with Mapei Renovation smoothing compound. Or Just use renovation compound as it can go upto 30mm deep in one go. Either way you need to make sure the plywood is correctly fixed along with using the correct primers ( Mapei eco prim t) . Depending on how good the rest of your plywood work is will depend on if you need to skim the whole floor with Renovation Screed or if you just need to use a skim coat (Fball 500) Have a look here as this may help. = viewtopic.php?f=32&t=368
Thanks Matt, both the reply and the pictures help a great deal, but of course, they also lead to the inevitable supplementary questions! I’ll build up with ply and as you suggest smooth off with Ardex 45. Still cogitating on what to do with the rest. The ply is pretty good, in the sense it is smooth, even if I do say so myself (no one else will!) so a skim coat might well be ok, but I’m never keen on ‘might well be ok’ so I’m looking into what the impact would be of doing a full renovation coat. I assume that if I did do a full skim with renovation compound the vinyl would be ok to go straight on top of that? Would I expect the fitter to glue it or just it just sit in place the room is around 5m by 2.5m? Also, looking at your pictures I can’t work out how you stop the compound running under the kitchen cupboards, can you enlighten me? Thanks again
Without seeing your prep work i cant say if skim coat will be sutible or not. Using Renovation compound it will give you a perfect finish but again it all depends on how well you can put the stuff down. You could end up making it worse ! To stop it flowing under cubards you need to put some sort of batten down. Draft excluder for doors is good or i use gripper. Any chance you can get a picture or two up of your plywood. Pic of joints and your screws ? make sure you shrink the pics down before posting if there large.
Matt, thanks again, here is a picture of the detail of the plywood. Well I hope it is attached and viewable - first time I have tried this. By the way, sorry I have taken so long to respond but had a bit of an issue with the ceiling........... When I started painting it I found a section where the skim had not adhered properly to the old ceiling so it cracked under the roller and I ended up having to take an area down – hence the marks on the plywood! Builder is sorting it out..... Anyway back to the floor. The delay has allowed me to think about it a bit more and I realise that a full skim is not really an option because in one part of the room I have a hatch in the floor through which I can, if necessary, access some central heating pipes. So I will need to limit the levelling compound just to the area which needs building up. Is Ultraplan Renovation Screed ok to go down to a feather edge, or do I need to keep it to 3mm and then uses something else (Fball 500) to create a feather edge? And based on your previous advice I’ll use Fball 500 to fill in the screw holes and joints in the plywood. Once again thanks for your advice, it is very much appreciated.
Needs to be kept above 3mm. You can try and ramp it of a little at the edge. Then do as you say above. Your picture is also to small for me to see properly.
Matt Thanks, suspected I was rubbish with the picture....so I'll give up on that if you don't mind. Basically I have joints between the plywood of around 2mm and screws every 6 inches so I think I should be ok filling these in and getting the vinyl put over the top (I hope) Re the renovation compound I'll keep it to 3mm and feather off as above thanks you very much for your input.
