Black mastic removal question
We tore up our kitchen floors which was comprised of: 1st layer linoleum, 2nd layer linoleum (20% chrystoline), 1/4” plywood stapled to tiles(asbestos 2% chrystoline) . I was able to take the plywood linoleum layers out intact by cutting the linoleum seams which would keep the asbestos linoleum contained and I cut it wet to avoid asbestos. We had to pull hundreds of staples in order to get the tiles up.
We had the tiles tested beforehand and they came NEGATIVE for asbestos, but we didn’t know if the mastic contained asbestos so we plastic’ed off everything, created negative pressure in the room , wore respirators and tyvek suits, and pulled the tiles wet in case the mastic had asbestos. Luckily we took these precautions because I thought it was weird the tiles came back negative for asbestos, so we still treated them like they were asbestos since we thought the mastic could have it.
I sent in a tile sample with mastic and it came back POSITIVE for asbestos tiles, 2% chrystoline, but negative for asbestos for the Mastic. I’m beyond pissed that slabinc.com gave us an incorrect asbestos result on the original tile sample. Kind of freaking out. I have a double layer of plastic and tarp down on the floor now wondering what to do next.
Ideally I wanted to strip it down to the original wood floors.
Do I:
Try to remove the black mastic using a steamer since it supposedly doesn’t have asbestos? I’ll have to have another company test the I can’t use a Diamabrush since there were asbestos tiles on it.
Lay down 1/4” plywood and install LVP that looks like ceramic tile. Do I use shims to level the plywood in preparation for the LVP? Any other options?
Any input or suggestions would be greatly appreciated