Floor Prep

No way, no how am I going to go through this again, ever. Or at least, I refuse to rip up another basement's worth of soggy carpet and padding. (Incidentally, I need to give a shout-out to Faiz who, even with a tetanus-y foot, loaded his truck with my mountain of carpet trash and took it away.)

Obviously, re-carpeting the basement was out of the question. Hardwood floors were nixed too. The concrete sub-floor looked a little too uneven for a smooth tiling job. Painting the thing seemed like the easy and most practical route.

apartment therapy and the diy network both gave me some good tips on how to get it done. All I would have to do is clean the floor, degrease it, etch it with an acid, prime, and paint!

Just a couple of problems:

First, the floor was still very dirty. Patches of carpet padding pockmarked the concrete, which was also decorated with rivulets of glue where I had already managed to pull up the padding.

Padding & Glue Rivulets

Second, there were two raised lumps of concrete, where a previous owner had apparently patched the floor.

my lovely concrete lump

Getting the padding and glue up was simply a matter of elbow grease, but the concrete patches were another matter. That was going to require a hand held grinder with a diamond cup wheel.

I considered waiting until Dad came down for Thanksgiving and letting him do it, but I wasn't sure he could carry that kind of equipment on the airplane and I really need the basement ready so Edmund can sleep down there over the holiday.

Hertz equipment rental actually wanted $170 to rent me the grinder and wheel for a day. Home Depot in Fuquay Varina let me have the grinder for 4 hours for $25 and sold me the wheel for $50. Hertz equipment rental can go hang out with Rainbow International.

Bad-Ass Grinder

The grinder cut into the concrete like it was butter. I had anticipated flying chips of cement, so I had picked up safety goggles ($5.98), but I hadn't accounted for the clouds of dust:

This is actually after it cleared a bit.

I was concerned about working in this dust, as I was running a half-marathon the following morning and was pretty sure that inhaling concrete particles wouldn't help me run faster. Without a dust mask, I had to improvise:

Declaring jihad on concrete lumps.

(Insert Awful Half-Marathon in the Driving Rain, requiring 3 days recovery, both physical & emotional.)

Last step before painting: Cleaning & Etching & Re-Cleaning.

Careful to add the acid to the water, and not the other way around, I washed the entire floor with the solution, so the primer would better adhere to the concrete surface.



I hosed all this down (yes, I RE-FLOODED the basement on purpose), vacuumed it all up with the wet-vac, and let it dry for several days before applying the primer.


Next post: Paint.