David L. Farquhar, computer security professional, train hobbyist, and landlord
You can put peel and stick tile over existing vinyl, but there are certainly right and wrong ways to do it. If the underlying vinyl isn’t in good condition, you won’t be very happy with the results. And if you don’t do any prep work, you won’t be very happy with the results.
I’ve seen this go well, and I’ve seen it go poorly. Here are the secrets that allow it to go well.
If you have a problem with glue coming up between vinyl tiles when you lay them, I have a couple of solutions.
And you will want to solve the problem. The glue discolors the tile, and doesn’t get any better with age. It attracts unsightly dirt and then nothing about it looks good.
A lot of people know you can remove paint from metal with oven cleaner. What you may not know is that there’s a cheaper way that works just as well.
Marx 6-inch cars in beat-up condition are cheap and easy to find, but you can dramatically improve their appearance by repainting their frames. If the body is scratched up it still won’t be a showroom car, but you can halve the number of scratches on it and it will look nicer. Here’s how you go about restoring Marx 6-inch frames.
As I write, I’m installing self-stick vinyl tiles in an old basement as part of a project to modernize a ’70s man cave. It’s possible to run into a few problems when installing vinyl, so I thought I’d run through them, along with the solutions. When vinyl tiles won’t stick, there are ways to prevent and fix the problem.
I have three storm door handles, much like the one to the right, that were a bit worse for wear. The painted black finish had worn off over time in places, creating an uneven finish of dull black and dull gray. Replacing them would make the house look a lot better in a subtle way, but there was nothing wrong with them–they worked fine, they just looked worn out.
So I repainted them instead of replacing them and saved myself $30.
There are several acrylic floor finishes–sometimes mistakenly called wax–that promise they’re like a new floor in a bottle. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but if you have reasonable expectations, they definitely can make a floor look better and easier to clean. And depending on how you use them, they can even make the floor last longer.
The most annoying thing about the house we just bought was the musty basement. I’m sure it’s a common problem in 65-year-old houses with basements that are anything less than bone dry, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant.
Our painter had a suggestion. Fill a big bowl with ammonia and put it somewhere that nobody can knock it over accidentally. He said it would absorb that musty smell very effectively. Read more