Laminate Floor in Basement

We originally wanted to install carpet in the basement to make it warm and cosy.  However, I can't install carpet.  This means that the price of carpet is double what the sticker price says per square foot.  Laminate flooring I can install myself so that cuts the price in half, and we found this floor for less than a dollar a square foot.  This made the floor much more affordable, the laminate flooring we picked was Kaindl 10mm Lisbon Maple. This is what we are looking at now.

We are very happy with the way it turned out.  The dark floor completes the look we were going for.  I should mention that this is in the basement so we put down a dri-core sub floor and then a cork under pad with a vapour barrier before the laminate when down.  This should provide significant protection from the concrete floor in terms of temperature and moisture. I have a bit more work to do in the closet and the built in toy shelves.  Hopefully in a few months we can work on some trim and baseboards.

The above picture is the hallway leading from the office to the main part of the basement.  The stairs coming down are just to the left.  I thought it might be fun to remind everyone how things look before we got started.

I am thinking that we have some improvement, the kids are very excited to bring the TV and the Wii back downstairs.  I need to remember to schedule the final electrical inspection this week.

Thanks for following this project.

New Bathroom is finished!

Busy weekend around here that go all the doors painted 2 coats of white and all the door knobs installed and a second coat of paint on the walls. The white doors helped the contrast with the wall colour which we were getting worried was a little too light, so on our second coat on the walls we darkened it by 25%. The lesson here is to trust you wife when it comes to the colours as it will all work out in the end. I also connected all the outlets and put all the covers on, so all the electrical is finished.

I am mostly excited about my new bathroom.  It is always nice when you work on all the rough in stuff get the drywall up, paint it all realise that everything is where it needs to be.  Well almost.

This bathroom is a long story that begins with the flange in the floor for the toilet.  I wanted to get a proper one that sat on the outside of the pipe coming up from the ground.  The guy at home depot told me that I would need to bust up the concrete around the pipe, which sounded fun to me.  The problem was that the dri-core sub-floor was finished a little too nicely around the pipe so I had to bust that out a bit first.  Then slowly I broke out enough concrete to believe that I would be able to get the flange in place. I cut the pipe flush with the dri-core as it was all glued in place and the walls were build on top.  I installed my laminate floor and tried to dry fit the flange only to discover that it was 1/2 off the floor.  This of course would put my toilet hovering off the floor.  So I took everything apart and cut up a few pieces of ply wood, nailed them to the dri-core and then put down my underpad and laminate again.  This time it was perfect. I went to put in my toilet only to discover that my water supply tap ended up directly behind the toilet.  Oops.  This prevented the toilet from fitting in.  So I turned the water off again, took apart the supply and cut as much off as I dared to and put it all back together.  The toilet just fits with a hair length of space between the supply shut off and the toilet (at least I am not wasting any space).  The end result is pretty nice.

Our biggest problem now is that we have hit our predetermined budget cap and we don't have a floor, ceiling or the trim and baseboards.  We are now looking around for a cheap carpet and installer as I have no idea how to install carpet.  So if anyone knows where I could find something please let me know.  We figure we will put in the carpet and then go through a "budget recovery" period before we finish off the rest.

Well that is how far we are it is really looking lit we may actually pull this off.  Our next challenge is the carpet once that is installed I will put up some more pictures.

Basement reno has paint!

We have finished painted the main areas of the basement and I have finished all the lights and outlets.  My brother was wondering where I was at so I thought I write up another post.

These are the steps leading down into the basement.  The colour is a light taupe, I wish that I would have taken earlier pictures of this area because this wall looks way better then it did before.  It being the basement, many things have gone up and down these stairs and these walls had the marks to show for it.

Turn the corner at the bottom of the stairs and you can see the lights, the camera didn't do so well with the bright lights but you get the idea.  I still am not quite sure how I am going to finish off the ceiling, but we will tackle that later.

This is the main area of the basement with the toy area on the left and the TV area on the right.  The toy area has to pot lights in the ceiling and the TV area has 4 pot lights and 4 wall sconces on different switches.  The sconces are dimmable to provide better movie watching lighting.

After all the paint was on the walls (and going back to fix a few spots) I give my mudding sanding a B+.  A few spots I wish were better but over all I am happy with the job.The next big challenge will be working out all the fixtures in the bathroom.  We have all the pieces I just need to put them all together (and make sure they don't leak).