Basement Part 3 - Floors, Finally!

This part has been by far the least agonizing and most enjoyable, probably because it brought on the most drastic visual transformation to our ugly little downstairs. As a refresher, here's where we were on out To-Do List:

1. Remove nasty old black baseboard trim and carpet remnants
2. Remove old rusty carpet staples and nails from the stairs
3. Paint walls with white primer
4. Install new baseboards and trim
5. Remove old paint from masonry wall
6. Paint masonry wall with Drylock
7. Install Flooring
8. Paint walls their final color
9. Redo stairs
10. Replace door and windows

IT'S FLOOR TIME!!!

We did a fair amount of research and cost comparison for floors. We knew this would be the most expensive part of our basement make-over, so we wanted to do the right thing. We ordered samples from some online suppliers and checked out Home Depot, Lowes, and Buy Floors Direct. We didn't want something too dark since the room itself doesn't get a whole lot of light, but we didn't want something too light either. Lighter floors seemed too hip for our house vibes. After all, we are barely cool enough for Nashville. We evetually opted for a red-ish click-lock by Shaw that we found at Lowes.

Handsome man modeling Shaw's 

We read that vinyl is best for basements since it is 100% plastic so no issue with moisture retention. Even though we felt confident that we had solved our water issues, we wanted to be mindful that this was still a basement in middle Tennessee and we get tons of rain here - better safe than sorry!

We debated for a few weeks whether to use leveler on our floor. After a few youtube videos and very scientific leveling test (i.e. lying on our backs in the basement) we determined that we were too lazy for leveler and our floor was flat enough for our liking.

A friend who recently installed adhesive flooring advised us to use click-lock. Her reasoning was that if you made a mistake or damage a board during installation it was much easier to correct said-error with click-lock boards vs adhesive boards. Read more on the different installation types of vinyl flooring here.

We had a few tricky obstacles to navigate, the first being this pole. Fortunately, it did not fall smack in the middle of a board, so we were able to measure and make a circular cut-out with our jigsaw out of the pieces close by:

Bobby and I found a good rhythm of me measuring and cutting and him placing the boards. An X-Acto blade or box cutter is all that is needed for the cuts. I used a square to ensure all cuts were straight. There were a limited number of repeating patterns to the floor boards so I also made sure we weren't noticeably placing the same patterned boards too close together. We staggered from the corner in thirds: first panel down was a full panel, next one was 2/3 length, the third was 1/3 length, then back to a full panel. This way there weren't noticeable lines running across the room.

We watched several YouTube videos prior to installation which we found super helpful. We both took a 4 day weekend over Independence Day and knocked it out just the two of us. 

The stairwell was also tricky to navigate. It was slow going and required some carefully measured cuts, but we got it done. 

All in all it turned out well and it made our basement look like a real room! Malu even worked up the courage to come downstairs after all was said and done!

The basement is still a work in progress, stay tuned for Basement Part 4 for the paint and furniture - it's gonna be a room!