The addition to our first floor, completed in August, brought about eighty new square feet to our kitchen, making it a real potential "eat-in" kitchen (which it was billed when we bought it, but never actually could serve that way). As a result, however, most of our kitchen is sea-foam green tile, with eighty square feet of unfinished concrete pad.
And the concrete pad is not level.
We have dreams of installing hardwood laminate (bamboo, to be specific), and are nearing our savings goal to pay for the stuff. Before it can be installed, however, the "new" section of floor needs to be level. To ascertain just what might be needed, I conscripted my HandyGirl to do some assessment (note sunglasses to protect eyes from concrete chips I was chiseling):
With a one-and-one-quarter-inch drop over forty-eight inches, the length of the new kitchen area would require a significant volume of concrete. I have worked with just enough concrete to know that screeting and troweling are not my thing--especially in confined spaces. So I spent a lot of time comparing "self-levelling" concrete. Several suppliers make it, but it turns out that no weekend warrior homeowner buys the stuff, because the DYI retailers don't carry it. (This should have tipped me off early; but it didn't.) So I had quite a runaround with the commercial sales departments of Lowe's, Home Depot, and our brilliant local guys to find out how much this part of the job would cost me.
The short ending: $700 to be able to pour a level floor without troweling. Yikes.
About a week before I was to suck it up and take the plunge, I spoke with my brother on the phone. Chris has done a whole lot of random construction and remodeling work on homes. I floated some questions to him about concrete applications. After kindly indulging my plan for a while, he asked, "Why don't you just use wood?"
Huh?
From that conversation, a new plan was hatched which would involve no troweling, no mixing, no warning labels about caustic lime. From leftover wood already in my possession, I am now laying down strips and screwing them to the concrete. Each strip is one-sixteenth of an inch thicker than the one before, gradually raising the finished floor surface to accommodate the concrete's bias.
In case I wondered whether my work would hold up under the soon-to-be-installed new flooring, HandyGirl Quality Control was on the job, testing every run.
It seems that trying to run twenty-two feet along the same two slats is great fun when you're two and a half years old.
Total cost of leveling: $50 for concrete anchors, a big Thank You to Russ for allowing me to borrow his hammer drill, and one home-printed sign for the front door that says "Uneven Pavement"--at least until the new floor is in.
~ emrys
1 comment:
Post a Comment