Sunday, February 7, 2010

The pain of DIY work...

I was going to not take the pic and/or share it until I was completely done because I didn't want to give away the big reveal yet, but I had to. I worked too hard and killed myself too much to not. Anyway, here's the basement family room at this stage. You can now see the paint scheme/colors (more or less), and here's the floor, with the main portion of the room finished. This space is about 30 by 12 feet. I did all of this MYSELF -- a little more than half the room on Saturday alone...(from just right of the outlets on the far wall to the left edge of the floor. I was a machine.

Laminate flooring is "easy" but it isn't as easy as they say...it takes a lot out of you. I'm not a marathon runner or weightlifter, but I'm not terribly out of shape. There's a lot of pushing, pulling and the like, and it KILLS your knees and back (even with kneeling on a foam pad). I was dead-tired today and still sore a bit...thankfully, I was able to sit down and watch the Super Bowl and do mostly nothing else.

There's another picture on my Flickr site of the "layers" of subfloor too, if you're interested. It's Tarkett Heartland laminate (I believe it's discontinued...bought it at Menard's more than a year ago, because it was something like 79 cents a square foot and came with a 25-year warranty!) on top of a vapor barrier-enhanced pad (DuoFoam with Self Seal), which is on top of Platon (www.systemplaton.com, if you don't know what it is). The Platon is placed on top of landscape fabric, per recommendations on the package (for sound dampening against the concrete floor, I believe).

I still have to finish the "wing" off to the left, but that's a much smaller room (13 by 10, or so, I believe), and then I have to cut smaller floor pieces to fill in the gaps near the walls (such as the one in the lower left). I should be able to knock out most, if not all, of this in the next week -- assuming all goes OK.

So, enjoy the sneak preview of the family room...once we get it all settled, I'll take another pic...there are a few other cool things we have up our so-called sleeves. :)