What we were called for:
There was a leak in one of the client’s properties, and water damaged the five-finger mosaic floor because the floor was glued down with bitumen glue which is more brittle than flexible. The blogs from that section of the floor that became loose were in a pile.
The process:
We started by checking if there were more loose blocks on the floor, after which we cleaned the subfloor and prepared for the big puzzle. We used Lecol 5500, which is proven to stick well on bitumen surfaces because it is a solvent-based adhesive. Sometimes after water damage, the blocks do not fit perfectly due to the expansion of each one, and that requires us to reduce the size and customise every single block to keep the gaps in a straight line.
Sanding and sealing:
After the adhesive was cured, we started with the floor sanding process. It took a 3 stage sanding before we were happy with the result and applied three coats of clear water-based varnish from Loba.
The result!
As you can see, the repaired patch is not a perfect match to the rest of the floor, but because it was a rental property, the tenant needed full access to his living room at all times, so our client could not follow our advice to sand the whole floor and all we could do was a local repair.
Overall it looks good, it will not move anymore, and we can always sand the whole floor at a more convenient time.
