Hit the deck...well, it's concrete, so be careful...

As promised, here's what up with the basement floor...

So, we have your standard concrete slab floor. The nice thing is, it's pretty even. It's mostly level, not perfect, but there are no major mounds or valleys that would cause a problem with laying laminate.

To update, I did not want tile flooring. It was going to be expensive to cover the entire floor in the family room regardless of what we went with, and tile just was OUT of the question. Too much work, too much money and too cold a result.

So I wanted laminate wood-pattern flooring. But I was worried about water seeping under the floor and ruining it from underneath. So I decided to go with a product many of you might know about: Platon. It's used on foundation walls, but is also recommended as a waterproof underlayment for floors. It creates an air pocket between the floor and the concrete, which also helps insulate the floor somewhat too. I wanted this in case the drain (now UNDER the floor) backed up again. My thought being, if it backs up a little bit (like last time...it wasn't much and it was clean rainwater from the pit in the backyard), it will spread out underneath the floor, eventually drain back out and eventually dry (the floor "breathes" around the edges beneath the baseboards). Mold should not grow because there is no "food" underneath, and the Platon is sealed together. Yes, if the drain backed up really badly, the water would eventually overwhelm the space under the floor and overflow into the walls and onto the floor, but if that happens, I figure I've got a lot of other issues to worry about...by then the whole basement will be done for anyway.

On top of the Platon, according to manufacturer's instructions, goes the pad and the laminate right on top of that. Right now, I have to do half the basement at a time (because we have furniture already), so I have the Platon laid and sealed on the largest part of the basement, and the padding spread across about half of that area. Tomorrow I expect I'll start laying the laminate. I'm excited, as I just bought a table saw for the project -- so I'll get to open that and "play" and also get this project even closer to done. My goal is to get the floor down before the Super Bowl...it's going to be tight, but I think if I can knock out a major portion of it tomorrow, I'll be OK. The remainder of it is a much smaller section, and even better, is mostly a straight square (whereas this part of the room has a few jogs in the wall that I'll have to cut around).

Pictures when I'm finished...no fair peeking! :)