My work is closed on a Tuesday so I use this as an opportunity to make a quick run back down to Wildwood to apply the NobleSeal to the floor. The patching/leveling compound must be fully cured by now so I should be able to knock out just putting down the membrane.

I start by sanding down the patching compound to knock down any trowel marks or other imperfections. I use a random orbital sander and a belt sander to do this work. After sanding I wipe everything down with a tack cloth and a damp towel. After that, I’m ready to start putting down the NobleSeal membrane. I have their recommended adhesive and it looks like I just need to trowel it on and then use a roller on the membrane. They recommend a 100lb roller, but that is not something easily obtainable so I bought a smaller floor roller along with a marble rolling pin.

I trowel on the adhesive in about blocks of about 25% of the floor area. Since the membrane is one sheet it’s a little unweildy to work with. The adhesive is sticky as expected and for each section I let it sit for a bit to tack up.

Eventually the entire mat is down and I start rolling it out. At first it seems OK using the hand rollers and bearing down on them with my bodyweight. I grab some sheets of tile to put them on the membrane to see how they lay and after shining a work light on the membrane, it shows lots of lumpiness with the membrane.

I do more passes with the roller until I’m too tired and I work out some of the lumps but it seems impossible to get a cleanly flat surface. The lumps are definitely adhesive because as I press on them you can feel them squish a little. I’m hoping that as long as they aren’t air bubbles, I can smooth things out with thinset.