That’s definitely ivc. Something heavy delaminated the top layer from its cushion backing.
I hated that stuff!
Actually it was Tarkett. That one down and visited the job today when doing a measure for another home.
The lady is an artist and this room is dedicated to painting.
If she wasn't there I would have taken a couple pictures for ya. There's a sliding glass door leading from the house into this add-on room. Up above the header for the door were four paintings of hers, bowls full of fruit, still life. Holy crap, they look like photographs this lady is very good.
Anyhow, to take this photo she moved a couple things out of the way to show the bubble more clearly.
I didn't take any additional photos but I did draw some stuff on the one she sent to me, the one I presented earlier.
To the left of the image is the exterior wall. She has a small table there with a roll around chair which of course to me became instant suspect.
That thought disappeared quickly because there was only one spot, the one you see were those any bubbling in the vinyl. With five sets of double casters, a chair should leave more than one spot delaminated.
I drew a couple of the chair casters on the left of the image for reference. I can't see her ever using the chair in the place where the bubbles are.
To the right is a 2x4 framed up stand that acts as an easel. I drew the location of this easel pretty close to the location that it normally resides in. When painting she would stand between the feet of this easel thingy.
When I was there today, all the furnishings were back in place. She must stand there while she works on her paintings. She's not a large woman so I would immediately deduct that the vinyl didn't delaminate because of her standing there and twisting back and forth while painting.
My thoughts now are possibly a rag with paint thinner was left on the floor overnight and did this damage. That or something solvent based tipped over and spilled there.
I brought a small piece of this flooring home and currently it's on the bathroom counter. I ripped five, dime-sized layers of paper towels and soaked them with paint thinner.
I'm going to leave this little dime-sized pile of paint thinner soaked paper towels on its surface overnight and see if it has any effect.
I don't know what other chemicals a painter would use. Most painters are either acrylics or oil so I can't see anything like acetone being used.
The bubble area is not melted in any way or has suffered any loss of sheen, it simply that the surface layer has delaminated from the foam underbelly of this Tarkett sheet vinyl.
The lady also told me that the fellow that installed the flooring also installed and underlayment, so I totally doubt that paint thinner, stain or any other solvent was spilled on the floor creating this issue from the underside upwards.
If one could inject an adhesive into this bubble, it would need to cure, because it doesn't have anywhere for air to dry it.
Funny thing is she has a leftover strip of this foreign, afoot wide that came from the side of the roll. The material is 12 ft wide and the room is 11 ft 8 or something like that.
She does have an exact pattern match, what are the chances?
When I asked that question, these types of flooring have pattern matches that are 6 ft apart or sometimes don't even match all the way across a roll.
Anyhow, there is a pattern match but I don't know if I have the guts to try and trim a piece to fit this.
What if I do a beautiful job double cutting this material and the edge of the adjacent stone has delamination? I wouldn't be concerned if this was off in the corner of a room but it's in the most heavily used one square foot spot in the room.
I also don't know what it was glued down with or how it was glued. Did they allow the adhesive to flash, and maybe this repair area will just lift right out of the pressure sensitive adhesive?
......... Or did they drop it in wet and this thing is stuck like gangbusters to the underlayment?
For now, I'm just going to do a couple experiments on it to see what it takes to make the surface bubble.
I'm not sure I want to screw something up by making it worse and end up buying the lady a new floor.
Anyway here's an image of the floor, half of the seat of the rolling chair or to your left, and where she stands in front of the easel is marked by the green.
