Let's Have a Q & A Shall We?

Happy Monday everyone!!  It was glorious weather here which allowed us to release the boys to play outside while we worked hard to get our house ready to put on the market.  We are shooting for the end of this week.  We shall see.

I was so excited a few weeks ago when I got my first question!!!  I really would love it if more of you asked questions.  That way I would know what you want to know more about, what I'm not making clear, any advice I might be able to give you about your own projects, etc.  I did change my blog comment acceptance to allow anyone to comment so please feel free to ask away there or you can also ask on Facebook.  So don't be shy!

The question I got was from Sarah A. in regards to the flooring choice we are putting in our basement.  If you recall, we are putting in a floating vinyl tile floor.  Sarah wasn't sure what that was exactly, so I'm going to do my best to answer that question.

In short, a floating vinyl floor is one that does not adhere to the floor itself.  The flooring I got adheres to itself.  The advantage to this is that it is easy to replace a piece if one gets damaged.  If water happens to get into the basement a few can be taken out and the floor "lifted" to allow for air flow underneath.  It is a good product to use in basements because it holds up to moisture well and basements can be a bit moist at times.  It does need a flat smooth surface so that is something to keep in mind.  It comes in a variety of colors and can look like tile or wood.

As with ANY product you will use in your home there are always pros and cons.  The only con I heard about this flooring type is that it could give me problems if it expands and contracts, thus either buckling or separating.  Two flooring guys gave me two different opinions.  One was concerned of this happening and the other has put it in a lot of basements and hasn't had a problem.  Because this product is recommended for basements I went with the second guy and he is installing it today so I will have a follow up post at the end of the week showing you how it turned out.  Very excited!!!!

Other things happening this week are the demo and repour of the front walkway and steps as well as the back patio, I also meet with a guy today to pick out fascia, soffit, and gutter colors, the demo is done in the kids bathroom so the new tile should be going in there, and the fireplace is being rebuilt and should be done by the end of the week.  All very exciting!!  It's crunch time so we will be moving quickly.  Glad you are all here for the ride.  I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am.  Thanks for reading and see ya tomorrow!

Basement Flooring

It is going to be 72 degrees today!!!  How glorious is that?!?!?  I'm wondering if the warmer weather is here to stay or if it's a tease.  I guess the next few weeks will tell.  I'm finally getting to the flooring choice in the basement.  I'm so excited about it and can't wait for it to go in.

One thing we are not lacking in with this house is wood.  We have sooooo much wood in this house.  I mean, people will come over and say,  "I like wood, but even this is a bit much."  I don't think it's so much the wood, but the fact that it's all the same color and with no other colors or contrasts of furniture and finishes, it's a bit overwhelming.

With the removal of the tile in the basement, I have been on the hunt for a replacement.  I obviously will not put wood floors down there, one because we have so much and two because you don't put wood in a basement, so the debate has been what is the best product to use.  There are so many great products on the market these days that there is a lot to choose from.  You have to look at all the possibilities and then weigh the cost in order to make the best choice you can.

Let's review a few choices for the surfaces I looked at in making my decision:

1.  Ceramic Tile - You really can't go wrong here.  PROS - It looks great, does well in a basement, and would have hid that crack well.  CONS - It can be pricey depending on what you pick and labor can be as well.  It is also pretty permanent and would be a bid ordeal to replace.

2. Linoleum - PROS - It's cheap, easy to install, and durable.  CONS - It's not the most impressive looking stuff and I just don't like it.  I have yet to find a floor pattern I like.

3. Glued down Vinyl Tile - PROS - Super durable, inexpensive, and good looking product.  CONS - Gluing it to the floor makes it super permanent and if the crack comes back we are looking at replacing the whole floor again.

4. Floating Vinyl Tile - PROS - Easy to install and easy to fix if there is damage.  CONS - Can be expensive and may have seam problems with expansion and contraction with moisture changes.

After going back and forth, weighing the PROS and CONS, and looking at products to see if I could find something I liked, I finally decided to go with a floating vinyl tile floor.  It just seemed like the wisest decision given all the factors together.

I ended up finding a 18"x18" vinyl tile that looks almost exactly like a travertine tile.  I got it at Menard's and it was on sale for $1.58/sqft.  Yes Please!!!  The vinyl is by Congoleum and the color is Stone.  I love it.

My contractor picked it up the other day and so we are just waiting to install it.  Once that goes in, we will be able to move a few things over and be just a little closer to making it our home!  Yippee!!!

Make it a great day!!!

A Crack

It looks like we may be headed into a warm spell after today!  That is exciting for a few reason, one that I won't have to bundle my children up anymore, and two because then we can start doing somethings to the outside of the house.  There are a few major projects that depend on the warmer weather so things are going to start happening fast and furious as we see the temperatures rising.  Today though, we are back in the basement talking about some big projects happening down there.

With the possibility of having french drains placed in a large portion of the basement, we needed to take up the existing vinyl tile floor before we started.  This was quite the job.  I had originally thought we would do it ourselves, but I'm really glad we didn't.  It would have taken us forever and we just don't have the time.  It was money well spent.

Besides not liking the tile, we had a rather large problem - as in a crack problem - that needed to be addressed and really could only be fixed with the tile gone.  

All basement floors have cracks in them.  If you have a basement, take a look, there is sure to be a crack or two.  Most of these cracks are small and expected as the floor expands and contracts and the house settles in after being built.  Small cracks are actually a good thing, larger cracks are not good things and depending on where they are can be a big deal and cost you lots money.

When we first moved to Missouri and were looking at houses we almost bought a house that had a HUGE crack in the foundation wall.  I wish I had a picture because it was the worst I've ever seen and I'm surprised we even considered buying that house.  A professional company had come in and fixed it but it was still quite the sight.  

The crack in this house is/was big but it was in the slab, not the foundation.  I've learned over the last few weeks that the foundation is actually the 4 outer walls your house sits on and the slab of your basement floor is separate from those walls.  They actually don't touch.  In our case, the slab crack ended up not being a big deal structurally, except for in a few places I will show you, and we got the ok from a structural engineer that we were good to go.

In this picture below, the crack is clearly not visible.  The tiles masked it pretty well.

Once the tile came off, it was clearly much more visible.

Houses can be funny and unpredictable.  The slab to the left in the above picture is one of the most level basements one of my contractors had ever seen.  The slab to the right however, slops off at about a 1/4"of an inch every foot.  That clearly creates a problem when you want to lay a new floor down.  

With the drop-off being that extreme the best thing to do was to level it out as best we could and then mask it with flooring.  There of course are other options, but that's what we are going to do.

Here are pictures of the floor after it was floated out.

Let's hope this does the trick.  It will be nice to get the flooring down.  I will blog about picking that out tomorrow.  It can be so hard to make decisions like that, especially when under a bit of pressure and on the fly.  I'm happy with my choice though and think it will look great.  See you then!

The Good News of Home Renovations

When renovating a home, you have to be aware that there will always be unexpected twists and turns as things are uncovered and you start to bring the house up to the level it needs to be.  Most of these end up costing you money, but some end up not costing you as much as you were anticipating.

Remember the whole radon mitigation problem?  Go HERE to read more about that.  Well, this week we started in on the process to allow for better mitigation and I hired someone to start putting in french drains.  The cost was not cheap.  While I wasn't holding out much hope for there to be gravel under the foundation, I still wanted to be sure, so I had them start in an area near a spot that had to be repaired anyway in the basement.  This is what they found:

That looks like a whole lot of gravel to me!!!!  HAPPY DAY!!!  I was so thrilled.  Since we found rock in this area of the basement they went close to the radon mitigation pipe and dug there to see how far we needed to come before hitting rock.  Lucky again, it was within a foot from the pipe.

Here is the floor filled in after they dug and found gravel near the mitigation pipe.

The basement literally had no rock in the one place they stuck the radon pipe.  You know what though, I'll take it.  It saved us money overall and that is a happy place for me.

Of course the same day I found out this wonderful news, my contractor called to tell me the garage door broke - as in no going up or down (fortunately it was stuck in the down position).  

If it's not one thing, it's another.  Luckily I was already budgeting for new garage doors.  I was just hoping it would have lasted a little longer.  It's a trip my friends.  Luckily it's a trip I'm still enjoying.

Happy Tuesday!!