Do You Need to Remove a Toilet When Installing New Linoleum?

Linoleum is an attractive and durable material made of linseed oil, cork and limestone dust. It can be installed in any room of the house and is frequently installed in bathrooms. If you are installing your linoleum in an existing bathroom, you may be tempted to try to install it without removing the toilet. Doing this, however, can be extremely problematic, both for the installation process and for the life of the installation down the road.

Old Tile Removal

If you're laying new linoleum in an existing bathroom, there is more than likely already tile or another flooring already in place. Because linoleum needs to be installed over a completely smooth and level surface, the old flooring will more than likely need to be removed before the linoleum can be laid down. Your toilet is installed on top of the existing flooring, which is laid right up to the toilet waste pipe. Trying to remove the existing flooring right up to the edge of the toilet may prove difficult if not impossible, depending on what the material is.

Eventual Toilet Replacement

Toilet footprints come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Some toilets may have large decorative skirts, while others have smaller bases. If the new flooring were installed right up to the edge of the toilet, and the toilet needed to be replaced down the road, the exact same toilet model would need to be found to eliminate the possibility that the new toilet's footprint wouldn't match the flooring, leaving a gap around its perimeter. Therefore, any bathroom flooring should extend beneath the toilet up to the toilet waste pipe to lend more flexibility in the future for toilet choices.

Plywood Underlayment

If your bathroom has existing tile that cannot be pulled up, such as asbestos flooring, the new linoleum can be laid over it, but only after a plywood underlayment has been placed on top of the old tile. The new linoleum will then be installed on the smooth new plywood. This plywood may be anywhere from 1/2 inch to 1 1/2 inches thick, with an up to 3/8-inch layer of linoleum on top of this. This would have to surround an existing toilet if it were not removed, which would both cause a potential place for water to leak, and lower the height of the toilet by 1/2 to 1 1/2 inches.

Expansion and Contraction

All linoleum has the potential to shrink and expand over time, particularly in bathrooms where the humidity levels can change frequently. This most frequently affects sheet linoleum, which shrinks in length and expands in width when it touches the glue that installs it. When laying sheet linoleum, an extra 18 inches are left on each end. After an hour, when the shrinking is done, the excess is trimmed away, with two sheets trimmed one on top of the other to form a tight seam. Against a wall, an expansion gap is left and the baseboard covers it. Against a toilet, however, there is no new sheet to form a seam and nothing to cover an expansion gap, leaving an obvious channel in the floor around the toilet.

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