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I recently replaced the flooring in my parent’s master bathroom without any prior experience. If you’d like to read how that went, you can find the details here: Installing peel-and-stick vinyl tile in bathroom

Since the first bathroom went so well, my parents wanted me to replace the flooring in their guest bathroom too.

Of course, every project is a little different and this was no exception.

I used a utility knife and flat head screw driver to remove the wood transition flooring piece without hurting it.

The next step was to remove the linoleum.

As soon as I pulled up the old linoleum from around the toilet, I knew I was going to need to do some new research. It appeared to have black mold on the wood subfloor from some previous leak.

After some googling about safety, I tied a bandanna around my nose and mouth while I cleaned this small area of the floor extra thoroughly with a spray bottle of mildew remover.

Once I finished cleaning up the floor (removing linoleum, scraping, vacuuming) and wet mopping the whole thing again, I waited for it to dry so I could begin the process of laying the vinyl tiles.

And this is when I hit a second snag related to the first. The floor didn’t seem to be drying on the left side of the toilet where the black mold had been. I was afraid that the toilet was still leaking.

Well, I’m no plumber so we made an appointment for one to come out and check the toilet for leaks. In the meantime, we turned off the water to the toilet for a few hours.

The floor finally dried, so we turned the water back on, and then the floor never got wet again. My parents think that it may have just taken a longer time to dry in that area because I had soaked the wood extra good with the mildew remover. We had the plumber visit anyway just to have a professional confirm.

When the plumber came, he did just that. He confirmed that the toilet was no longer leaking, but mentioned that normally the toilet is removed when installing flooring in the bathroom. I was concerned when he said this because I had not done that in my parent’s master bathroom, so I asked him to take a look at that one too and make sure it was okay and wouldn’t cause problems. He looked at my caulking job and said, “Wow! You did that? I’m impressed. It looks great.” And he said that there’d be no problem with me doing it that way in the other bathroom too.

Once we had that peace of mind, I finished installing the tile in the guest bathroom.

Voila!