Floorz

Well, most of the basement floor is in. It took almost 2 days to do the laminate flooring. We used an underlay by Roberts Consolidated that is designed to go over a concrete floor. It has foam pieces sandwiched between two plastic layers. We still have one closet to go, and we need to trim the underlay around the edges of the room. It wasn't too bad to install, we used a mid priced laminate from Ikea. Hardwood isn't recommended over concrete in the basement, and was probably out of our price range. I think it's possible to use bamboo, it's still more expensive though, so the laminate was a quickfix/compromise. The hardest part of the install was that we started on both sides of the bar, then had to meet the 2 floors, not an easy thing to do in an off square house. it may have been easier to start along the long wall on the other side. You can only install the floor in one direction, so we couldn't work backwards. The toolkit from Ikea kind of sucks too, the plastic piece used to bang the piece together, chips the laminant. After doing this five or six times or more, I switched to a block of wood. It works so much better, and I think I only chipped one piece this way.
I can't believe how much more finished the room feels.



As well we finished grouting the tile in the bathroom. Well finished for now, I'm going to do the rest of the tile once the vanity is in place. The toilet is sitting there waiting to be installed too. I still have some drywall touch-ups and then we need to paint and prime. We need to seal the tile as well, and finish installing the shower faucet, then we'll have a mostly functioning bathroom.
Next I need to order a bunch of wood for baseboards, window trim, the vanity et cetera. It's feeling good to see so much progress though, hopefully another month, and we can call it done.