So I just finished up installing laminate flooring only to find out that I removed some asbestos tiles without a respirator.. Needless to say I'm a little bit worried and upset over this ordeal.

Here's what happened. So We had carpet in our living/dining room and ceramic tile in our kitchen and front hall. Our plan was to install laminate flooring that flowed throughout the main floor of our house which meant that we would have to remove all of the flooring in order to get down to the sub-floor. We didn't want to have any transitions as we felt it would look much better if it flowed through the rooms seamlessly.

In order to get rid of the ceramic tile I used a floor scraper that was basically a jackhammer of some sort. Needless to say this created quite a bit of dust but helped get the job done fairly quick. Once the ceramic tiles were removed I then had to remove some plywood with thin-set on top. Again I used the floor scrapper for this. Once this was all removed we were left with this awful looking vinyl tile that had a bunch of screws drilled through it. I figured in order to pull the tile and the underlayment up I would have to unscrew all of these screws so I spend a good hour removing these. Once completed I got out the jack hammer/scrapper tool and managed to get under the layer of underlayment that the tiles were attached to. I made fairly quick work of this as most of these boards broke free from the sub-floor in roughly 4 sq ft pieces. As I was doing this I did see these tiles crack in half as each board was broken free. They didn't break into small fragments at all and I didn't notice much dust.

The one thing that is a little concerning is where the boards were stuck under our kitchen cabinets. Because they were going under the cabinets I ended up using a dremel tool and a small pry bar to get rid of the remaining pieces. Now I know using a saw of anything made of asbestos is an absolute no no. Heck, removing it is bad news period.

I think the full removal of of this tile and underlay took me about 2-3 hours and right after we did a full vacuum (with shop-vac) and dusting of all the surfaces in this area. (there was lots of dust left from the ceramic tile removal)

Now I'm sure you're all wondering why I took this risk. The truth is I had no idea that these tiles were made of asbestos. It was only a day later when my brother in law asked us for a picture of the tile that he confirmed that he was almost positive that it was in fact an asbestos tile. I honestly didn't even know tiles were made out of asbestos. I thought asbestos was some material that was used back in the 50's. Our house was built in the 70's so I honestly never would have thought this would be a problem for us.

Anyway, this has all obviously been removed from our house aside from whats under the kitchen cabinets and we have gone the extra mile by dusting and washing all surfaces including our walls. We have also had our ducts cleaned and our house feels very clean in general right now.

What I want to know is if we have any reason to worry. We obviously cant go back in time and whats done is done. We've committed ourselves to dusting our surfaces every day for the next week as we know any thing that could be in the air might take a few days to settle. The good thing is we no longer have any carpeting on the main floor of our house so that's one less place where small fibers can hide.

This has obviously been a huge eye opener for us and in the future we are going to take all necessary precautions before attempting a home renovation. I guess the reason I'm writing this is to warn other people not to remove any vinyl tile (or anything) without knowing what its made of. I'm also writing this for any possible reassurance some of you might be able to give us. This was a one time accident that we are determined to never let happen again. This has put a huge damper on our floor renovation and has created a lot of anxiety for my wife.

Has this happened to anyone else? Are we safe in our house if we keep it clean on a daily basis? We really do need some help right now as we just want to get back to our lives and leave this horrible ordeal in the past :(

P.S. this is the tile we removed.{{attachment:2646627}}

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