Refitting kitchens and bathrooms across Portsea Island
Older houses in Portsmouth tend to reveal layers when a kitchen or bathroom is stripped out. Under the lino there may be quarry tiles, under the tiles a screed patched decades ago, and around the edges a hard crust of old adhesive. New sheet vinyl or LVT laid over that shows every edge and dip within weeks.
Latex is designed for this kind of mixed base, as long as it is sound. Tiles must be bonded fast; we tap them over and lift any that sound hollow, filling the gaps before priming. Thin, hard adhesive can stay, but anything soft or powdery comes off. Uneven concrete is cleaned and primed, with loose areas cut out. The primer is chosen for the base, so tiles get a different product from porous concrete.
In Southsea, Fratton and North End the Victorian terraced houses often still have suspended timber ground floors, with timber upstairs as well. Latex must never go straight onto bare boards, which move and split a thin layer along every joint. The boards are screwed down, overboarded with flooring grade plywood, and the latex is spread on the ply. Where a ground floor joist has rotted, overboarding is pointless; that floor needs replacing, and the slab and screed route is set out on our sand and cement screed page.
Bathrooms show the benefit clearly. Safety flooring and sheet vinyl in a small Portsmouth bathroom need a dead flat, unbroken base so that seams stay tight and the coving at the walls sits neatly.
Damp, laitance and springy floors in Portsmouth
Latex smooths a floor. It does not repair one, and three problems need sorting before it goes anywhere near a Portsmouth refit.
Damp comes first. Older solid floors may have no membrane, and moisture rising beneath new vinyl will push the adhesive off and take the latex with it. We test before pricing, and a damp floor is dealt with properly, usually with a new membrane and screed.
Movement is next. A timber floor that bounces underfoot will crack a thin compound however well it is overboarded, so loose boards and weak joists are fixed first.
Then there are floors that are simply too far out. Latex works at a few millimetres. A kitchen that drops away towards the back door by more than that needs a deeper product or a screed, and our floor levelling page explains where compound stops and screed begins.
Newer flats raise a different point. Calcium sulphate screed is common on apartment floors, and its chalky top layer, the laitance, has to be sanded away and a primer suited to calcium sulphate applied before any latex, every time. Hard old coatings, or adhesive too thick to scrape, are removed by grinding the concrete first.
How we price latex screed in Portsmouth
A fixed written price within 24 hours, once we know the area and the base. See our floor screeding cost guide.
Who lays your latex screed in Portsmouth
K & B Screeding’s own team, led by director Donatas Bardisevicius. Founded 2019, company 12298780.
See what customers say in our Google reviews and on our testimonials page.
Latex Screed from Slough to Portsmouth
Portsmouth is about 54.4 miles south-south-west of our Slough base as the crow flies, with postcodes including PO1, PO3, PO2 and PO6. The nearest towns to it are Gosport (1.4 miles), Fareham (5.3 miles), Havant (6.2 miles) and Emsworth (7.6 miles).
More on latex screed, part of our screeding services.
