I have some peel an stick anti-fracture membrane for tile that would stick to the fir. Want me to Fed-X some?
Then I'd make a jig outa some wood, notched to the depth you need to be at when you install the flooring. Unless it is less than 18 inches, iI use an 18" steel patching trowel thats notched on the end/s
Fed-X yourself too and show me how it's all done.
I have some ideas in my head on prepping the area directly next to the seams. My router and a precise depth setting comes to mind, to remove the vinyl near the seam edges. The router and a 3/4 inch bit might be more precise and quicker than hand scraping. A perfect depth setting on the router would save the existing filler from any damage. A quick test of this idea will tell me if this idea is goofy as all get-out, or pure genius.
That seam area will be really difficult because when removing the old layers, I do not want to score into the existing skim coat/filler and weaken it where I will join on the new material at the seam.
The wet set adhesive has bonded extremely well to the skim coat.............. probably much stronger then the skim coat to VAT bond........... I am thinking that this will be my big issue when cutting the floor open for surgery and trying to create the new seams. I dont want my actions to debongd the filler from the VAT.
Vinyl bond to filler = very strong.
Filler bond to substrate = not nearly as strong.
The depth of the existing filler/skim coat is not consistent in it's depth along its 14 foot length, so I can't just start ripping things apart. I need to remove
only the vinyl without damaging or gouging the existing skim coat. This is gonna be surgery, not floor repair.
I will do a couple of small trials at some point prior to actually doing the repair. I need to remove the vinyl and not damage the skimcoat along the seam area. If I do, then I will need to float in filler to bring the seam edges into perfect alignment. That would be very difficult. I will have close to 60 feet of seams in these two repairs, so this is a lot of seam edge prep work.
Here is a cross section of the floor structure showing the vinyl floor and layers of the skim coat and VAT removed.
I need to fill up the void where the floor was buckled and VAT was removed, then feather in some filler, and yet still still retain an even/parallel edge upon to match the new seam so that both seam edges are horizontally even.
Matching the seam heights was so simple back when we could use S-200 on the seams.
Yes, I still hate these newfangled flooring products.