Thursday, June 26th, 2008
Yesterday was pretty fun. I met the tile installer at Tile America in West Hartford. I picked out the tile for the basement and the grout color. I like the grout to match the tile, so the floor doesn’t look like a big checker board. We also ordered up the thinset.
I bought 473.44 square feet of 13″x13″ Classic Wheat commercial grade tile. That’s a lot of tile. I also bought 60lbs of Avalanche colored grout. Lastly, I bought 100 lbs of Ultraflex polymer modified mortar.
The tile guys are coming tomorrow to start the installation. The nice thing is they are going to pick up all the materials before coming here in the morning. They have a truck…I don’t. If I did, trust me…I would be at Home Depot getting the 67 cent per square foot tile. Oh, the price I pay for delivery. I had actually contemplated installing all the tile myself. Then, I thought better of it. I think I would do a good job, but then again, who is going to do my computer work for me that day? I prefer to work at what I do and let others work at what they do. The door installation validated that.
Last night, I had a few small things to take care of in the basement. I had to trim up the bottoms of the door mouldings and apply a crack prevention membrane on parts of the concrete floor.
I used my Dremel and cutting disk to cut through two and a half mouldings. The first two went very well. About half way through the third one the Dremel started sounding like popcorn. I looked down and smoke was pouring out of the motor. The whole thing felt so familiar. Man, it stunk!!! Yeah, I guess I blew up my Dremel. I will have to check my receipt to see if it’s still under warranty. To finish the job, I used my reciprocating saw, which I should’ve used the whole time. It worked great.
After that, I gave the whole floor a nice cleaning. I swept and vacuumed. If there are any cracks in the floor, you need to use some sort of a membrane. I have actually heard of people using tarpaper for this, but I chose to use RedGard. I got two gallons at Home Depot yesterday. The other option was to use Schluter®-DITRA, but I didn’t think I needed that. The only thing that is wrong with the floor is a hairline crack about five feet long. You can hardly notice it. I tried to stay on the safe side.
RedGard is very cool stuff. It has the consistency of yogurt and can be applied with a brush, roller or sprayer. It goes on pink and dries red. After it dries, it’s like a layer of plastic. People use is for a crack membrane and waterproofer. I am sure you can find other uses for it too.
I basically needed to use it for that one crack, but decided to put it around all the concrete expansion joints too. I believe that you aren’t supposed to tile over expansion joints. You tile up to them and keep the joint. From what I am reading, people tile right over everything, while using no preparation and the tile floor lasts for 100 years. It’s only us who analyze the thing to death that have issues. I am going to see what the tile installer’s experience tells me. After all, he is the expert with the picture book of hundreds of jobs.
I’ll take some pictures tomorrow of the installation.
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Saturday, June 7th, 2008
Just a few minutes ago, I finished painting the basement. I feel like this is breaking news or something. Well, with the way I dread painting, I feel like it should be some sort of news.
I have been doing a little bit each day…chipping away at it. Luckily, the walls were in great shape. There were some pin-holes here and there, but no real spackling. I didn’t even have to sand, I just used a wet sponge. That is so sweet.
For this painting project, we bought two gallons of color and one gallon of white. When I began to paint, I noticed that I was going through the color pretty fast. I also noticed that I had no idea how much white I was going to use. We went back to the store and grabbed two more gallons of color and one more gallon of white. Now that the project is done, I have exactly two extra gallons of color and one and a half of white. Isn’t that funny? Not really. Now I have to decide which room gets to be the same color as the basement. I think my office may benefit.
It’s not too much of a change from what was here before. Just a slightly different color. I also changed the trim and doors to white. I love that contrast. It looks soooo HGTV.
The door guy is coming (hopefully) this week to replace the basement door. Also, the tile guy is coming out on Wednesday to give me a price on doing the floor. If everything goes smoothly, we should have a brand new basement in a few weeks. Then, I can call the pellet stove place and have that whole thing set up.
I wonder if I am the only guy on the planet thinking of a pellet stove when it’s 94 degrees outside.
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Thursday, June 5th, 2008
I have been pretty busy lately, between working, planting plants, getting the cars registered and, oh yeah, re-doing the basement.
I believe I told you about it in an earlier post. Then, I had the floor torn up and was considering what to put on it. Now, I am paiting the whole thing up.
I realized something along this short journey. That is, I hate painting. I mean, I can do it in short bursts, but I lose interest fast. One room is fine, two maybe, three weird sections and I’m lost. I have to say it’s getting there though.
We picked out a color that looks very nice when dried. We got a little nervous when I started putting it on the walls, but got over it. I am also painting all the trim and doors white.
You may be asking yourselves, “Why, Jay, are you doing this now? Why so fast…what’s the rush?” Well, I’ll tell you. The whole reason is that we are going to put a pellet stove in the basement. In order to put a pellet stove down there, we need a new floor. In order to put in a new floor, we need to remove all the base moulding. If the base moulding is off, we may as well paint the place. Also, since the moulding is off, we might as well take this time to replace the French doors leading to outside. They need to be replaced and it needs to be done before the floor goes in.
But “why now” you ask? The reason is that you need to get a pellet stove in the summer. Things are slower and more available. Also, pellets are cheaper. We will need at least three tons.
Yeah, all this just to put a pellet stove in the basement and get rid of the carpet. I told you how I feel about carpets. I also removed the carpet from the basement stairs last night. That was fun. I really like pulling up tack strips and pulling out staples. Good thing I am proficient at this type of thing.
I am setting up the date to have the door installed tomorrow. When the install happens, you’ll know about it. I am also having the tile guy come over tomorrow to give me a price on the installation. I was going to do it myself, but I quickly lost interest in that once I started painting.
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Friday, May 30th, 2008
I am going to put this one out to the masses. I recently became stumped with what to do with the basement floor. Unfortunately, the stump”ness” came about after I tore the whole thing up.
If you don’t know me all that well, I oftentimes shoot first and aim later. At first, I thought this was bad, but later on, I realized that by doing this, I don’t mosey around over-thinking the whole thing. Since many of my projects come out very decently, I intend to stay this way.
Ok, here goes. We have this finished basement that is very dry. It has a concrete floor that used to have carpeting covering the majority of area and those linoleum tiles covering the rest. There is a dehumidifier downstairs keeping any moisture in the air down to a nice level.
Yesterday, I decided to peel up the linoleum tile and carpeting. This took me a few hours, but it’s all nice and clean now. I cut the carpeting up into squares and took up the underlayment. Everything is now out in the garage. As for the sticky goo, underneath the tiles, I used mineral spirits and a brush to get that up. Then, I used Simple Green to clean the entire floor.
Why did I do all this? Well, for one, I don’t really like carpet. I like hard wood or tile. Dogs like to pee on carpets and dust mites like to live in them. Also, I never like to think about what’s growing under a carpet, especially in a basement. Even thought basements feel dry, there is always moisture coming through the concrete. That doesn’t sit well with me.
The basement floor is in very good shape. It’s dry (as I mentioned above) with no cracks. There is one small hairline crack, but it’s hardly noticable. There are gaps between areas where they poured the concrete.
My initial idea was to tile the entire floor. We pretty much had tiles all picked out. Then, I started doing a little research on the internet. That may have been a bad move. One guy says, “Yeah, go ahead and tile right over the concrete.” The next guy says, “Sure, you can tile down there, just use cement backer board.” The third guy says, “You can’t use cement backer board on concrete.” This goes on and on across any number of websites. It seems like no one knows what in the world they are talking about, but love to give uninformed opinions. I am going to call the tile guy who did the old house for advice.
Since my reading, I have had some other ideas. I thought that we could put down a bamboo floor or laminate. I promised myself that I would never use laminate again, so that’s going to be hard.
What I am looking for is ideas and advice. Will those gaps in the concrete affect the tile? Will temperature differences from outside to inside make the tile crack or pop up? There is going to be a pellet stove down there too, so the temperature will be quite different from outside, especially when it’s a cold January night.
By the way, we don’t mind a cold floor.
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