flooring
We had to remove a kitchen cabinet to free space for a dishwasher, and now the visible floor is bare.
I have few tiles that I would like to install on that area, but I have no idea what steps I should follow to do it the right way. it is an old kitchen, 40 years old, I can see wood floor then another layer of wood then a layer of vinyl.
I'm looking for a fast fix for that area since our plan to renovate the whole kitchen in a couple of years. Appreciate your help!
If it's not visible, just got for a manufactured board, e.g. plywood, OSB, etc. For 3cm, you may be looking at two pieces stacked on top of each other. If it's on concrete, install a moisture barrier first. To secure the boards, I'd avoid the temptation to use a Ramset and permanently drive the names into the cement, since the next time the flooring is redone, you can take the opportunity to do it right and pull everything up and go wall to wall. Instead, secure it with a few cut nails. Again, this all assumes that none of this is visible.
(source: jmnails.com)
Unfortunately, you NEED to remove or cover the old vinyl. If you attempt to tile over an unsecure base, you are wasting yout time and money because the tile will not stay down. In your case, if you go over the splitting vinyl, the vinyl will continue to separate and up will come the tiles. If you go over the paper layer, the mortar/quickset will not stick properly. If you don't want to strip everything, which is a very thankless job, and your subfloor may not be the greatest either, then screw down a layer of Hardi-backer. Hardy-backer or concrete board is the perfect base for your new tile. Good Luck
Best Answer
Based on the picture and what you described, you have tile set over vinyl sheet flooring that was put down over 1/4 in plywood used as underlayment, and the gray stuff underneath is the old floor boards. I'm assuming you want to tile this because it's no longer going to have something sitting on it and you just want it to match for the next few years until you renovate the whole floor.
The easiest quickest thing to do would be to fill the gap in the thin plywood underlayment with more plywood, either same thickness or a little thicker to make up for thickness of vinyl, then set tile over that adhering it with thinset directly to that plywood. If you don't put down plywood, you'll need to have the thinset a good deal thicker which means a) more thinset to buy+mix+handle, b) sloppy deep mess of thinset to work with and level tiles in, c) maybe over thickness spec for the thinset. Also you'll be adhering directly to the floor boards and that's not great because a) you'll probably ruin those boards and will have to replace them if you do anything else with the floor later and b) they're almost certainly not a good substrate for tile because they flex from load and environmental changes.
Quarter inch plywood over floor boards is still not great, that tile is likely to crack either when you set something heavy on it, when the seasons change, or just from walking around in the kitchen. Ideally, you'd make sure the structure underneath that floor is sufficiently strong so the floor doesn't flex, tare up the whole floor down to the floor boards, put down proper thickness of plywood, maybe some kind of waterproof membrane if you want a waterproof floor, then tile the whole thing wall to wall.
But as a temp fix, you can put down more plywood to make the hole less deep and protect the floorboards, set tile on it with thinset, and grout it. You can try to knock out the cut tiles like Jack said if you want to make it more continuous. For more info on setting tile, invest a few bucks in this book from amazon and check out the John Bridge forums.