Downstairs Flooring Project: Moved In

This is the last one, I promise. I assured myself I'd write about something other than our downstairs before we settled in and moved things down and started living there, which of course would come with pictures and the like. Partially because I'm lazy and partially because we ended up doing a whole lot today, this was not meant to be. And hey, these entries are easier!

Above: What was passing as the family room upstairs.

Long story short, we spent today cleaning the rest of everything – damp-sponging the walls, scrubbing the wide shelf around the whole area and the shelves on one wall, vacuuming, and getting rid of crap – and then moving the chaise, the couch, the TV (which proved to be hardest of all), all of the electronics and video games, plus all of our books, DVDs, and video games down and set up shop.

Above: I've been dreaming of filling those shelves with books and DVDs for
a year and a half. It was terribly satisfying to finally put crap on them.

We ended up fulcruming the chaise over the railing to get it down, which is probably the smartest idea I had all day. We thought that would be heaviest and hardest, but it turned out to be rather easy. The love seat afterwards was slightly more difficult, and the TV, left for the end, of course turned out to be the worst – it's a 42" plasma; you'd think it'd be easy to move but even with handles on the back it's heavy, front-weighted, and awkward. We got the speakers off the sides and it got a lot easier to manage. Everything else was batches of small stuff – DVDs, books (OK, a lot of books), video games, etc.

Above: It's not perfect, but we're getting there. Then again, it may
not ever look "professional" to me when I'm the one setting it up.

Of course, re-wiring a TV, cable box, and three video game systems is always more fun than it looks. It's a bunch of crap back there, but it's all hooked up. I wish there was some sort of cable-tangle-coverup, though I suppose the solution is a media cabinet, which is in the cards eventually. Step one, move down. Step two, get some real furniture.

Above: Who'd have thought that the biggest piece of furniture was the easiest to move?

In the meantime, I think it's about time for a housewarming party.

Downstairs Flooring Project done!

OK, we've gotten the obligatory depressing post out of the way. Let's hope we don't have to go there again.

In better news, the downstairs floor is done. It's been done for a couple of weeks but, as the back of my mind predicted, the idea of keeping a blog current is much easier than actually doing it in real life.

I said a ways back that I'd talk about the choices we made, so here goes. We wanted to keep this project as green as possible, so as we looked to materials and contractors we kept that at the forefront.

Above: A close-up of the carpet plus a look at our sloppy paint job.

For contractors, it was a pretty easy decision. We do most of our materials shopping at Green Depot so we asked them for some recommended contractors and they said that whenever possible they go with Boston Green Building. We gave them a call and they said their flooring guy, Ray Bumpus, is certified in Marmoleum installation (we were originally thinking Marmoleum for the hallway) and likes to work off-hours which was fine with us. We met with him and went over our ideas and concerns, all of which he listened to and lent his expertise where needed.

Above: Another close-up, carpet on the left and cork
on the right with a nice transition.

At this point, we got serious about materials. We visited Harry's Carpet One in Quincy, in part on Ray's recommendation and in part because Green Depot's selection wasn't terribly big. We spent quite a while there and came down to some finalists, though in doing so realized that Green Depot's selection isn't terribly big because, when you get right down to it, green flooring materials is still not too big a business. There are options, but when you're going green you're definitely limiting yourself to certain styles, colors, and materials. It's still important to us, though, so we found it easy to make certain concessions. We wanted natural wool carpet – I leave out the word "organic" because we learned that it's incredibly hard to actually certify wool as organic; much like corn it can pick up non-organic contaminents on the wind in the growing process – and while looking at options for hallway tile we started to consider natural cork instead of Marmoleum. Both are quite eco- and health-friendly, but cork ends up a much more earthy look and it started growing on us.

Above: He even joined it to the crappy old carpet in
the storage room so we can take our time with
whatever we end up doing in there.

With some finalists, with notes and photos, in mind, we returned to Green Depot to compare what we'd originally looked at. In the end, we both realized The One was there after all and ended up ordering Jamaica Bay in "Night Owl" by DMI, one of the leaders in natural wool carpet. We also ended up with Coreia by expanko for the cork.

We had to do a moisture test to be able to put the cork down, so Ray set up a kit that essentially places an uncovered canister of calcium chloride salts on the bare concrete, sealed under a plastic dome. It sits for something like 60-72 hours, after which you pull up the dome, seal the container, and weigh it on a scale accurate to 0.10g. This turned out to be rather difficult to find, and we ended up taking it to our local pharmacy to weigh. We had to take that weight and do calculations with that, the original weight, and the number of hours the test was run to determine how many pounds of water per 1,000 square feet it absorbed. expanko doesn't recommend installing at anything 3.3 or above, which would also be a problem for the carpet, and we came in at a perfect 2.015.

Above: Denali inspects the finished cork installation.
And yes, we need to add a door sweep on that door.

From there the install went pretty quickly. As with any renovation job, it's always the demo that takes so much longer and this was no different. After pulling up the carpets and working on the old, dessicated pad and adhesive with scrapers and buffers, it was finally determined via group decision that we had to get into some sort of chemical solution. Ray had a product he'd used before that is about as gentle as one can get while still being effective, so we OKed that and things got easier. Once they started laying tile and carpet, they were done in a total of 6 hours or so (spread over two days as they were working nights and weekends).

Above: The finished carpet install. Homeowner-tested, Murphy approved.

All told, we love it. We still have some cleanup to do from our sloppy paint job and some residual dust from the buffer work, but we're getting there. Coming soon: housewarming party!

Downstairs Flooring Project, day N

So I absolutely fell off the wagon as far as keeping up with this blog goes, though in my defense we rapidly jumped from our original plan of a weekend and one week of nights to a more scattered schedule and, as such, there's been less to talk about on a daily basis. We near completion, though!

Ray came by last Wednesday and they did both the tile install and most of the carpet. There's a chunk between the two that comprises the extra 10 square yards I failed to order. After some last-minute scrambling last Friday, we managed to get the missing 10 square yards of carpet delivered to the house in the afternoon before heading out of town. Ray's coming today to finish the install of that and then I think we'll be set.

It's weird to think that it's almost done down there. We spent 5 hours last Sunday removing all the painter's tape that's been up for about a year. It was a painful, annoying process but it's done. We also put in a new lighting fixture on the wall plus a new chandelier in the foyer. We need to do some cleanup down there of the trim and woodwork, as I'm sloppy with a roller and everything's speckled with latex paint, but it should come up pretty easily. It's also dusty from the buffer that removed the old pad and adhesive, but that's nothing a vacuum and wet rag won't fix.

Above: In my classic OCD way, I rolled the tape I removed as I went.
The perspective is screwy, but the roll above is about 6" x 8". You
can see the new lighting fixture in the background, too.

Above: The princess surveys the damage to our collective sanity.

Above: The new chandelier in the foyer. We're big fans.

Pics of the end result to come soon. I promise. No, really.

Downstairs Flooring Project, day 3

Or: The Real Victims In This Whole Mess

Above: Murphy and Denali check out the door. Again.

One problem with this project, and it's a problem we do run into with home improvement projects, is that the cats need to stay out of it. Now, we've tried blocking off the downstairs. Access to the downstairs is tough to block off, though. Being a split level house, the living room is bordered by a wrought iron railing surrounding the foyer. We've wrapped the whole thing in giant pieces of cardboard but they still wriggle underneath and jump the six feet down or, even scarier, jump over onto the stairs. The lower floor is currently pretty dusty and dirty, so we wanted to keep them out of it. We set them up in our bedroom and attached bathroom with their water fountain, a litter box, and their food bowls.

That was Saturday. They're pretty annoyed at this point (Monday evening), to say the least. They haven't stepped foot outside the bedroom since Saturday morning. It's now to the point where Murphy, the more (what's a nice way to put it?) outgoing cat, the one who thinks he's a dog, has started teaching nice, quiet, sweet Denali all his tricks. She's now taken to jumping onto the stuff-covered dresser at 4:00 in the morning, mewling, or walking across my nightstand and knocking things over, sticking her rear in my face. It was tough enough with one doing it every night, now she's doing it too.

We're about to the point of being done with demolition, though, so we might be able to clean up down there and let them out soon – provided we're not waiting on water shield drying or some such business. In the past we've locked them up for painting, but paint's dry in a few hours so it's not so bad.

Long story short, I'm expecting to be eaten in my sleep some time soon. If you don't hear from me within a couple of days, call the MSPCH.

Downstairs Flooring Project, day 2

Playing a little catch-up here as I didn't actually start blogging yesterday as I'd planned.

Yesterday they pulled up all the existing carpet, scraped the old pad off, and started on adhesive removal. We also had some excitement: I took a look at the original estimate for the job and realized I'd ordered 40 square yards of carpet instead of 50. Good times! Off we went to Green Depot to find out exactly how much carpet we'd had delivered on Friday and to bring Ray back a sample so he could see what he could do with joining or sewing. It also turned out that we had to order the water shield we plan to use, as they didn't have any in stock. It's a veneer-like product that goes straight on the concrete to prevent moisture seeping up to the carpet from the slab.

At this point, we're overnighting the water shield to get it here on Tuesday. Once we have official word on the length of carpet we can find out how much more we need to order and put a rush order on that, as well. Ray initially figured they could get the entire job done in the first weekend and following weeknights, but at this point it looks like we're going to end up pushing to the following weekend regardless.

Here are some photo updates.

Above: The hallway, now sans carpet!

Above: The main room, plus some buffing machines

Above: The fireplace side and impromptu tool bench

Above: Out the back, plus some attempt at adhesive removal

I realized I hadn't talked much about our flooring choices. I'll try and do some of that in tomorrow's or Tuesday's update, as there'll be a lull in work. See you then!

np: Alkaline Trio - Dethbed

Downstairs Flooring Project, day 1

If you know us, you know that we've been talking about renovating the downstairs since before we even made an offer on this house. It's a split level, built in 1974, and I think that was when it was last decorated. When we moved in it was all dark wood paneling with a red carpet. The sliders were duct-taped shut with heavy red velour curtains, shielding the previous owner from the dazzling sunlight while working away in his office–what at the time looked a little more like a burrow.

Fast forward a year and a half! Living entirely on the upper floor, we sanded the paneling down over the course of about six months, primed the walls, and months later settled on carpet, tile for the hallway, and, last but not least, paint. We went ahead and painted in the space of a weekend (though we've yet to remove the mile of painter's tape) and finally scheduled the flooring to be done starting this weekend and happening nights during the week to wrap up next weekend.

It's the first time we've had someone else come in to work on the house, though, and it's a reasonably major project, so I figured I'd blog the progress similar to our friends Jack and Anne's recent kitchen overhaul. Not as many moving parts as there, so it won't be a fraction of the excitement, but I wanted to have before- and after-photos and here's a good place for them to land.

Here's the morning work started. We weren't sure when Ray would be showing up, or if he'd come at all on Saturday (details were left loose due to vacation schedules) but sure enough, he surprised us in our pajamas at 10:00 Saturday morning.

Above: The hallway, with carpet

Above: The main room, with carpet

Above: The fireplace side, with carpet. Isn't it lovely?

Above: Ray and his assistant hard at work. Note that this carpet
was actually put down over another thinner utility carpet.

Yeah, you heard me correctly.

Stay tuned for more; exciting times ahead.