Linoleum sheet over 3/8 inch face-nailed oak

[ivanho]

Original oak floors in 1888 Victorian that was carved up into apartments. I'm trying to figure out how to remove this adhesive/thinset type material that was under a linoleum sheet. This was a kitchen in the rear parlor room. A picture is worth a thousand words, but I thought I'd post to see if anyone had any ideas for how to determine what the material is.

It's an off-white color. It was applied directly over the oak floor, then a sheet of linoleum was put down. The linoleum sheet came right up.

[lupinfarm]

Hi Ivanho..I seem to remember a couple of years back I had the same problem and purchased a jug of Adhesive and glue
remover. It was still hard work, but less so with the remover. You could try the Home Depot or Lowes
Check out this link it may be helpful
http://www.diy-hq.net/flooring/how-to-r ... oleum.html

[ivanho]

I tried steaming this stuff to soften it, which it did a little bit. But thought I'd post a picture in case someone has any better ideas. There's about 75 sq ft of this stuff to remove. I'm going to run to try paint stripper as well.

[chooseopen]

I am working on the exact same problem on my 1896 victorian. We are redoing the kitchen and have removed tile, tile subfloor, and linoleum layers... The linoleum's plastic layer pulled up easy with the help of a heat gun, but the paper/adhesive backing is stuck firmly to my 3/8" x 1.5" original oak floors. So far I have tried WITHOUT success:

*Manual scraping
*Heat gun + manual sraping
*Spraying an area with H2O+wall paper remover
*Wallpaper steamer

My adhesive layer is very hard. It doesn't seem to be gooey and anymore, so I am going to try hitting it with a hand sander and hope it doesn't clog the paper. If that works, I could remove most of it with a hand sander (just barely down to the wood surface) and then run a floor sander over the whole room.

My only other idea is to pull the floor up and maybe run each piece through a planer to shave off the glue. The floor has to come up anyway b/c this original oak floor only covers half the room (part of the room is an addition). We are slowly accumulating enough matching salvage material to then re-install this wood on the whole floor.

I have to figure something out soon b/c my wife is already talking about wanting to just bury it under a layer of subfloor and starting over.

[ivanho]

I went to Home Depot and got some adhesive/mastic remover. It's right next to the paint strippers. I was going to get paint stripper until I saw the adhesive remover.

I tested a section last night. I put it down kind of thick, waited 20 minutes, and it came right up. It was easy.