Tiling Over Vinyl Flooring

We finally figured out the flooring for our basement.  We had the hardest time trying to find decent flooring.  Finally, after deciding against sheets of vinyl flooring because we would be wasting SO much money with excess, our epic fail with peel and stick tile that didn't stick and thinking we found the right vinyl flooring and it was too dark, we did it, we found the perfect tile, got it installed, grouted and sealed and are now one step closer to being done with the basement.  Our fourth trip to Menards was a successful one.  We actually weren't even there to look at flooring, but I decided to pop on over to see what they had as a last desperate attempt to see if they would have anything that we could use.  The tile we fell in love with was a ceramic tile and purchased from Menards, it was awesomely priced at 50 CENTS a square foot (approximately) and was made through Innovatile.  It has definitely held up to the traffic constantly on it and we love the fact that it didn't break the bank!!

Originally we talked about ripping up the vinyl flooring that was already down, but opted against it once we realized that we would be trying to peel it up forever and found this stuff.  Apparently it is supposed to work wonders and we have no complaints so far.

The vinyl flooring also acts as a barrier between the tile and the concrete floors, so we figured it would do more good than harm to leave it.

We managed to turn this:

Into this:

This project was pretty quick.  The tile was laid in one night and we grouted the next.  Bam. Done!

So to get this project started, we pulled up some of the vinyl flooring that was having commitment issues with the floor.

From there we figured out the "middle" was and got prepped.

 We used TEC Sturdi Flex Thin Set Mortar and went to town laying the tiles.

Slowly but surely we were able to see the light at the end of the tiled tunnel...

 And after lots of measuring, double checking the measurements, marking the tiles, cutting the tiles and laying them in, we were done.

It was beautiful....

And it was EVEN MORE beautiful once we got everything grouted.  We used TEC AccuColor Premium Sanded Grout in 915 Light Smoke .

Actually tiling was cheaper than our original idea of vinyl floors....

Here's the breakdown:

$35-tile

$13-mortar

$11-grout

Grand Total: $59.00

Now I'd say that is definitely a win for us since the original vinyl flooring we wanted would have been over $100.00