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 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.