Buh Bye Carpet

The first thing to go was all the basement carpet. Since the basement is primarily going to be our my office/sewing/craft space, carpet just doesn't work. I finally found the perfect hardwood to put down there, so excited about it, instead of staining the concrete. While concrete would look awesome, I think hardwood is going to look a lot better (granted it does cost quite a bit more compared to a couple of gallons of stain).

We opted to do installation ourselves to save some money. The first thing we my significant other and father in law did was remove all the carpet.

Then the cabinets (while spacious but totally useless for me) had to come out and of course the wet bar. I am thinking of using the sink outside somehow for Emmett to play with...ideas ideas. And we are going to keep a couple of cabinets to use in the garage cause they are great storage.

{from this}

{to this}

But they need to be bolted and that wall/cabinets definitely need some paint, but that is a project for another time I think.

After these came out, we removed the few random baseboards and the last of the nails in the concrete. Then my Dad got to work removing all the nails, hooks, shelves, etc. from the walls and got it somewhat ready to paint.

Next we took a straight edge and found all the low and high parts on the floor, as anything over 3/16 of an inch in variance over 8 feet needed to be fixed. We found some bumps - meaning drips of concrete when it was installed, etc. and removed those with a grinder. Then for the low spots we applied a very fine layer of concrete on top to make them within the accepted tolerance. Next up was filling in the few cracks that had formed from the ground shifting and those lovely California earthquakes and some other random holes found (and maybe caused from pulling up the carpet). But they needed to be filled to prevent moisture from coming up.

So this is how it is looking after all the work on prepping the floor:

We have dry vacuumed it maybe 50 times now and I still think that there is dust and stuff, it just doesn't get cleaner. Plus our tools, paint stuff and flooring material are everywhere. Probably because instead of doing just one project at a time we seem to insist on doing about 20 projects at a time. Ha!

Next up: Finish painting and installing the floor.