I cant decide on which shower system I want to use. Tile has its grout issues. Fiberglass scratches and discolors. Even a swanstone shower wall and receptor system still has caulked seams like a tiled shower corner would need.
Iv seen many linoleum floors which I had to look closely at to determine if it was tile or not. Why not choose a very high quality linoleum for the surround and bend it at the corners to have a truly water proof enclosure down to a swanstone receptor or your tub? Could linoleum be bent at the corner with a small radius?
The only tough part would be at the raw edges and dress them up.
Any thoughts or ideas?
If you want a truly waterproof shower system, then you need to look into a membrane applied product, like Schluter Kerdi or liquid applied. You are not going to achieve this with linoleum. Linoleum will not work. Have you seen what linoleum or vinyl tile do when moisture gets underneith it?
Also, a properly built tile shower will not have issues.
Actually AFAIK linoleum is a specialty product not generally available. I think you mean sheet vinyl for floors.
I'm referring to linoleum as a surround in a shower or bath. On the walls like this.. You could use a cove in the corner and a cap to hide the raw edge.
Tile a Shower in Less Than an Hour For Under $30 | eHow.com
If the linoleum surround didn't have a seam, how could water get behind it HotinOKC?
I found a great deal and bought a kerdi shower kit yet I dont trust myself to become a tile setter over night. Iv spent some time reading and found many horror stories about DIY's screwing up one little step and then needing to rip it out and start over.
Maybe a complete swanstone receptor/shower wall kit.. But you still end up with silicone in the corners. But no grout.
You would have seams at the top and bottom of the shower. I don't think the linoleum would withstand the soaps and water of a shower.
You bought a kerdi kit and you want to hand linoleum over it? The lino would almost certainly tear being bend into a tight 90 degree corner.
I would find a good tile or a fiberglass unit.
Hi GiantScale,
The article you are mentioning is a perfect piece of wrong advice
I see several problems
1 - Linoleum should not be used vertically
2 - Each hole is a potential entry for moisture / water
3 - :PF:Linoleum should not be installed in bathrooms
I'd suggest that you check the recommendations of this manufacturer
I went for a door service call at house full of (apparently) crazy people. (Not that I'm saying you are Giantscale!) They had put peel and stick tile on the walls of the kitchen and yes...on the bathroom walls and in the shower area. It was originally just a tub with painted walls I guess, but they added a hand held shower and wanted a water resistant surface.
That article is nonsense. If you put linoleum on the walls, thats exactly what you will have. It won't look like tile, nor will it perform like tile. When it comes to showers, don't try to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of proven methods/products out their that work.
Mobile homes used the method. I have an older rental mobile home from 1970 whose shower walls look brand new. I have installed many myself in rentals, and it works. 23 years about, in this. No theory. Actual experience in college rentals for all those years with those same properties, so I have been able to keep track of these installations. I also did a bosses house many years ago. And to this day it looks beautiful. Chose tile/grout looking patterns.
I have not had problems in vertical corners. Silicone caulk has worked fine. But you can imbed that white plastic inside corner trim into the silicone caulk and finger off the excess that squirts out. Landlord that I have done work for, for 23 years, who is very handy in his own right, was so impressed by this method, that he did several himself, and trimmed them out with that plastic trim. And they are all holding up and look nice.
A few out of the many I have done have had water get trapped at the top-of-tub caulk, and caused the linolemum to pull away a little. But that is like a just a few out of a couple dozen. And as I said, if one goes the extra step and uses that plastic trim with caulk sandwiched behind it, you will not be having that possible problem.
A weak spot is if say you have a shower with old fashion 2-handle mixer and it just so happens that if water leaks out of a bad valve that it can wick into the sheetrock and cause water damage of the sheetrock and staining of the linoleum. IF that happens, the choice is to fix the leak and try to prevent it in the future with more caulk at the valvestem, and overlay that headwall again. Or, cut out the area from about 2 inches above the mixer valves on down to the top of the tub and then redo that section of sheetrrock and then overlay only that area with glassboard, and it looks intentional and sharp.
The linoleum withstands household cleaners for soapscum and lime. Even blue-can oven cleaner.
If say one lasts you say only 10 + years and you notice a little something going on -not too much skin off your nose to simply overlay right over the existing, with new. Just like overlaying a linoleum floor over and existing one. Look at all the abuse a linoleum floor takes and al the mopping with cleaners and water. We ahve rentals that were built in the mid-80's and still have the same linoleum floors and they still look good.
Oh. And on one such bathroom I did many eyars ago, I did this for a 1 1/2 story corner bathroom over the tub where the ceiling was low and even came down to 6' 6 at the rear of the tub/shower as the wall curved downward, and I linoleumed the ceiling and everything still looks new in this heavily used college rental! When I installed it, it stuck right to the ceiling without even trying to pull loose.
And you can easily cut the linoleum around windows and trim it out the same way so that it is all quite waterproof.
I haven't done these in years now, and have not really priced linoleum lately. But when I was doing these things, it was cheap, and I could do these jobs pretty fast.
There was only one house I did that I remeber that something went wrong on the outside wall (the long wall of the tub/shower) and I had to overlay it again with the same tile pattern. No real bnig deal though. Somehow moisture affected the entire felt backing and grayed it out. There was a possibility that this old house's wall was maybe uninsulated and the hot shower water hitting the cold wall caused this -I'll never know, as the house was sold. Outside the house on that wall I remeber I had to do some caulking and the roof in that area had a valley and was suspect, also.
But one can look at this in the positive: If say a part of such a system failed due to water damage - at least you get to learn of water damage going on. Where say if plastic is used, you might not find out until some real serious damage has already occured.
ecman51`
are you talking about linoleum or are you talking about vinyl self adhesive tile?
Solid sheet vinyl cut out of 6 or 12 foot roll. Definitely not self stick tiles. Yikes. That would never work.
On old mobile homes they used to actually wrap it right around the corner sometimes. But that can be a recipe for disaster if it gets punctured. Also, to lay it around 3 sides continous can be risky to keep the pattern right for plumb and level, and along the top of the tub. Much easier to just cut 3 separate pieces and either caulk the corners or imbed that plastic-foam trim stripping into the caulk.
It really does look nice. I have done them using like 4 inch tile pattern where there are like those small diamond shapes along with them, that might be teal color. And other 4 inch patterns. And also have done many using the 1 inch tile pattern where they are sort of beige-ish or gray-ish with white 'grout' lines.
When I was doing these, I used premium adhesive that never dries out. Never. And I also prime painted the sheetrock first. I think I used oil. I still have some on a test board that has been out in the air all these years, and is still like gum.
You use a fine notch trowel and quickly apply it nicely. One of the ideas of oil prime painting is to cut down on the amount of adhesive that the sheetrock would wick. This stops any wicking, except for what goes into the felt backing. Then set the linoleum into it and work it out all directions from the middle with a damp hand and/or rag. Then you do not keep playing around with that procedure because you do not want to start gathering the adhesive. If bubbles start forming right after you are done - leave them. The linoleum will pull back to the wall, probably by the next day. They do indeed disappear. In theory, it is best to let the adhesive tack up some before imbedding the linoleum, so that more gases are released prior to trapping those gases. But regardless, there is enough breathability that the bubbles do disappear and lay flat, even if you are impatient and lay the linoleum about right after you fine-notch trowel the adhesive. You can get the most enormous bubbles if, even on linoleum floor overlays. That really traps the gases. You can get huge blisters - but they too will disappear. These make take several days to disappear, but they do disappear, like magic.
I know the how-to process. My question was related with the material, because in your message you are using the word linoleum and the process and results you described are not possible using linoleum. Only if you use vinyl or plastic. And this is a very important info for our DIY users, in order to avoid confussions
This is the info from the manufacturer
Although some people still call all sheet floors linoleum, genuine linoleum is quite different from vinyl floors. Vinyl floors are composed of synthetic materials such as polyvinyl chloride and urethane, while genuine linoleum is made from natural components. How is Armstrong genuine linoleum made?
The main ingredient of genuine linoleum is linseed oil. (In Latin, linum is the word for linseed, which comes from the flax plant, and oleum means oil.). The oil is boiled, mixed with melted resins, and combined with powdered cork, wood flour, resins, ground limestone and other natural materials. Mineral pigments provide the color. This mixture is formed into a durable sheet by applying heat and pressure
I hope this helps
Patricia, you are spitting in the wind. If you look at the third post in you will see I said the same thing but was ignored. I suspect none of the posters are old enough to have ever used linoleum. If they had they would know the difference. {LOL}
I didn't even think they had linoleum anymore. I presumed by using the word linoleum that everyone knew that it is the modern vinyl sheetgoods. Sorry if this caused any confusion.
And I was not posting a how-to in trying to instruct a moderator on how-to applications,. This was intended for any interested party including the OP.
My problem with any how-to is if the author does not even know the correct name for the material he is writing about what else doesn't he know. He really lost me with the suggestion to use a spray adhesive. Didn't see the material list he referred to but while I can think of some adhesives that might work I don't have a clue about a spray adhesive.
Years ago on one of the Bob Newhart sit-coms, the one where he owned an inn, he was a book author. As I recall his characters book were based on research only not on having actually ever done anything he wrote about. I saw this how-to and some other articles I have read as coming from the same process.
My home center has spray adhesives in a couple of their departments.
I use them for various applications - but would never trust them to permanently bond something like what we are talking about.
I've had to use it a lot in trying to readhere duct tape to ducts (before the health inspector does a reinspection), and the duct tape keeps coming off the ducts anyway. Duct tape sticks to everything it seems, except certain ducts.
Actually, it is foil-faced ductboard, which is wrapped around the metal ducts, and duct tape was used to bind it. And it pops loose and the spray adhesive has been a quick fix for me, but does not last.
Ecman
As I stated in my first post real linoleum floors exist today and they are a good (and green) choice because linoleum is a natural material
I used linoleum in several projects and, as ray confirms, it is not even close with a vinyl tile
ARMSTRONG LINOLEUM
I clarified the issue in your post, because you edited your post as how to
ray2047
You are right, names, materials, and the are mixed up. This is why, as moderator, is my job to clarify these issues. If, in a future, someone reads the thread, the subject of this post will be clear
Tags: linoleum, shower, walls, genuine linoleum, have done, linoleum floor, linoleum floors, linoleum surround, linoleum that, shower wall, spray adhesive, talking about, tile pattern
