ORC WEEK 4: EASY + BEAUTIFUL DIY FLOOR

I knew the floor would be the single biggest change in our basement renovation. The old floor was just so terrible that it absolutely could not stay, not to mention we needed a floor to not just change the look of the space, but add warmth, sound dampening and be durable.

I can't tell you how happy I am with the change our new cork floor made. But that is jumping ahead in the story because we installed this baby ourselves!

Globus Cork provided the materials for this floor so that I can share the process of selecting it and installing it with you.

Before we finalized the design, we laid out one row of tiles and took a panoramic photo to see the whole room at once. You can see we make a few changes to the planned design.

So in Week 2 (back when I was an optimistic person who wasn't completely freaking out about finishing this project on time), I walked you through the process of selecting the floor, which was no easy feat when the options are pretty much only limited by your imagination. We decided on a random stripe pattern in using Bleached and Alabaster colors, both in the nugget texture.

We installed click and lock bamboo floors in the bedrooms several years ago when we did our big renovation and I remember there was an issue with the delivery truck actually getting the flooring to our house. It came in several boxes and technically we should have had a forklift to move it. So it was a lovely surprise when the cork flooring showed up delivered by a regular carrier, possible only because it's so light.

I made a list of the order in which the stripes went that we checked off as we went so we didn't lose our place!

Globus Cork has a really thorough installation tutorial on its website which was hugely helpful but honestly, we were overthinking it. We opened the boxes and let the cork acclimate for a few days while we prepped the floor. The key thing is that the cork, which is laid used a contact adhesive (the back of the cork tiles are pre-coated and then you apply glue to the floor) needs to go on top of clean plywood or uncoated concrete. We had our tile installer friend (a good friend to have!) do a self-leveling skim coat on top of the concrete to make everything smooth and give us a nice surface to work on.

As with any floor, the hard work is in the prep, and it's important to make sure that everything is square. Using a chalkline, we mapped out the center, perpendicular lines and a starting line for our first row that was based off the centerline, not the wall (there isn't a straight wall in this house).

From there it's just a matter of rolling on the adhesive, letting it dry clear (it took about an hour with a fan blowing on it in our cool basement), and then sticking on the cork. In order to avoid stepping on the adhesive, the first few sections, each about 3 feet wide, took a bit of time. The first row is the most important, so we took a lot of time lining it up with chalkline and a square, making sure to not allow it to touch the floor until we were ready for it to stick.

Line up the inside corner of the tile first, then the long edge, followed by the short edge and lastly the freestanding corner. I applied firm pressure for a nice tight seam.

It's important to line up one corner at a time and just lightly let it touch (if you have to pull it up you still can, albeit very carefully, so long as you don't press down) and then gradually get the other corners set. Set the next tile by butting it up right next to the first tile, again one corner at a time. The nice thing about the cork tiles is that they have some give, so you can really get nice tight joints by firmly butting up to the previous tile.

Pound the tiles with a rubber mallet to seal the adhesive. We paid special attention to edges and corners.

With the first row set, we made our way across the room, checking off each row on my cheat sheet, because it would have been easy to lose our place with the random stripe pattern. When a section was done, we pounded it down with a rubber mallet. I'm not going to lie: This was the only onerous party of the process. You have to pound the cork (not roll it) to seal the adhesive, and that's a lot of pounding. Bonus: You can skip your regular arm workout.

Use a drywall T-square, a solid cutting surface (NOT your floor!) and sharp utility blades to trim the cork tiles. We cut them upside down, but I don't think it matters. Way easier than the saw you'll need with just about any other kind of floor!

There's a few other tips and tricks we learned to installing cork flooring:

• Unless your pattern requires them to be lined up, offset your seams.
• Use a drywall T-square and a sharp utility knife (change the blade often) to cut cork. 
• Take your time with the first few rows and then you can fly pretty quickly.
• A scissors or utility knife also works for cutting around odd-shaped corners or obstructions.
• Pull tiles from several boxes to account for any color variation.

If you look closely you'll see a bump where we failed to make sure the self leveler was completely smooth. 

There's one don't to share with you as well. Globus Cork is clear that the floor needs to be perfectly smooth before you lay the cork and in almost every spot it was. But there was one place where the self leveler didn't level very well and there was a bit of ridge. I meant to sand that area down, but I completely forgot about it, and now there is a raised spot visible through the cork. It's not a big deal and I doubt that anyone else will really see it, but it could have easily been avoided. So learn from me: Make sure you don't skip that step! Cork is a forgiving floor because it can handle a floor that slopes (don't try that with tile), but its flexibility also allow bumps under the tile to show.

After the floor is installed, a final coat of sealer goes over the top (the cork is already sealed, but this final coat helps seal the joints and make the cork even more durable). It was easy to apply with a foam roller but took a little longer to dry than we expected. The only problem with that was that we had to wait a little longer to show off our new floor!

I can't begin to explain the difference this floor makes in this space. But maybe I don't need to. I think the pictures speak for themselves. What you can't tell from the pictures is how much nicer it is down there. It's hard to explain, but it goes beyond just looks. It's warmer, quieter and cozier. And I really do think the stripes combined with the off-white paint on the walls and ceiling have made the room feel far more in proportion than before. Almost like it's magic. Yeah, let's go with that. It's magic. 

I'm (crazy enough to be) redoing the basement as part of the One Room Challenge. Check out the progress week by week here:

• Week 1: The plan
• Week 2: Flooring options
• Week 3: Paint for days

And make sure to check in on the hundreds of other guest participants and featured bloggers. Things are gonna get hairy from here on out!

FRIDAY FINDS

I can't wait for the weekend. I have nothing special planned other than little projects here and there, including on doing more painting in the basement, but some weeks an unplanned weekend sounds like the best thing in the world.

Lots of great stuff happening online this week (well the fun stuff, not the bits that I use this blog, and others, to escape from).

Linda's gardening journals are works of art. I love them and wish I had the talent or dedication to make any kind of garden journal. This blog is the closest I'll ever get to one.

I hope we never have to replace our wood floors. Redoing floors is terrible because you basically have to move out of your house and it is very expensive. But I recall the floor guys telling me they didn't know how many more times the original floors in our house could be refinished so theoretically it could happen. And if it did, I think I'd want a floor like this. 

I think our house is around 1,400 square feet (I can't recall exactly anymore) and I can't imagine wanting a bigger house, but apparently I'm in the minority on that. 

Two real-life friends have recently launched amazing blogs that I want to tell you about.

This illustration by Madalyn Joy became this stunning outfit ....

 Cassie Sterwald photo

The first is my neighbor, who was just a kid when we moved in, but is the most stylish young woman I know (she puts the rest of the neighborhood to shame in the style department). Madalyn is a talented fashion and lingerie designer who shares her creative inspiration and process as they become her creations on Styled by Madalyn Joy.

And a longtime friend and his family recently purchased and moved into a Frank Lloyd Wright house that, until 2015, no one knew was a Frank Lloyd Wright house. It was built in 1917 as an American System-Built House, part of Wright's effort to develop houses for any income level. (Here's a story about how the found out it was an FLW house featuring the previous owners.) My friends have passionately taken on the stewardship role that comes when you buy a house like this and they are blogging about it on The Elizabeth Murphy House.

That's it from here. I hope you have a great weekend! Tell me what you're up to in the comments. 

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK 2

Welcome to the second week of my personal One Room Challenge, where I attempt to renovate one room in six weeks. See Week 1 here.

Some affiliate links may be used. I very much appreciate your support of this blog. 

It was a big week in the bathroom progress and, not surprisingly, we ran into more than a few hurdles in the process. This is no surprise: This old house is anything but square and level. This caused a rather significant issue when the contractor was setting the shower pan because they had to futz around with it for quite some time. We went with a low-profile plain shower pan. There is only about an inch difference in height between it and the finished floor so it's very unobtrusive and I didn't feel like fussing with a custom mudded and tiled shower pan.

Then it came time to level the floor, which was out a full two inches from one end of the bathroom to the other, just 9 feet away. Our poor tile guy (the husband of one of my best friends, who has done all of the tile work in our house) spent seven hours just leveling the floor and incorporating the heated floor cables (an add-on that I couldn't have cared less about but Mr. Much More Patient really wanted). He was here until 11:30 one night!

To accommodate the amount we had to bring the floor up to level it, we fashioned a ramp to meet up with the hallway.

Leveling the floor meant we had a decision to make about how to make the transition to the hallway, because of course the "high" side of the floor was the end by the hallway. We decided to create a mini ramp with two pieces of tile.

The floor in progress. It took much longer to level it than it did to tile it.

And then the floor tile went in. Bestill my heart. I was very selective about how the pieces should be laid out (although a couple snuck in places I wouldn't have chosen, but it's fine). Originally I was planning a herring bone layout in this room, but I was afraid that the striped marble tiles in the small room would be way too busy in a traditional herringbone layout. So I decided to have them set in the same pattern but perpendicular and parallel to the walls, rather than angled to the walls. Somehow it calmed the design to me.

I sealed all the tiles ahead of time with the sealer our tile guy recommends and I'll give the entire floor another coat after the grout is completely dry.

I can't tell you how much I love this floor. When I found the tile I knew right away that I'd do whatever it took to have it and although I've had a little pushback on it from some people, I think it's fabulous.

Yes, I love it. 

What is most amazing thus far in this renovation is the difference that pulling out the shower insert made. I thought this was a small bathroom. Suddenly with a full height ceiling in the shower and the additional 6 inches we gained width wise (enough to accommodate a 66-inch by 36-inch shower base), the room looks huge. Even without anything on the walls in the shower, it looks so much bigger. I never expected that.

The room looks so much bigger with the shower insert removed.

We'll see what surprises the coming week brings.

Check out the official One Room Challenge featured designers here and all of my fellow guest participants here.

A great looking wood floor for pennies? You bet!

Since I've done almost no decorating this year, haven't wrapped a single gift or baked a single cookie (yet), I'm lacking in the holiday post department. But that's doesn't mean I don't have a little gift for you. Because I do: An awesome idea for a super cool, great looking and inexpensive floor.

This floor can be found in a great new shop that recently opened in my hometown. It's full of super cute stuff and it's just a lovely space. But what caught my eye from the beginning was the really cool floor. And that's when I took a closer look and realized it was ...

Oriented Strand Board (kind of like plywood, but made with small wood strips all mushed together with wax and resin).

I know, can you believe it?

One of the owners told me the story: As they were fixing up the space (which had been an antiques store, appliance store and a bunch of other things in its past life) they realized it would be very expensive and time-consuming to try to rip up the layers of flooring to get to the original wood floor in the old building. Looking for an inexpensive solution for this large space, they came up with the idea to use OSB. They figured they had little to use: If it didn't work, well then they had a great subfloor all set for whatever they decided to do on top of it.

The only way you can spot the seam in this photo is because some of the green paint that comes on the edges of sheets of OSB is left. If it weren't there I bet you'd never spot it.

They set the OSB sheets down on the floor and kept the joints super tight (I can't remember if they offset the seams or not, to be honest but I think you could do whatever you wanted), and nailed them down as you would with any subfloor. The trick is to line the joints up really carefully to keep them tight. I think if you wanted to get really picky about it you could use wood filler or caulk to fill them but really, the OSB is so busy that it hides a lot of evils.

Then they rented a floor sander and sanded it all twice: With 30-grit and then 60-grit sandpaper. Then they applied stain just like you would with any wood floor. What I love about the floor is how the stain sticks to different orientations of the strands in different densities. Then they followed it all up with three coats of polyurethane.

 

I think this floor is brilliant. It looks great and was inexpensive. And in the midst of this beautiful store, with it's charming displays, fun products and wonderful windows, wanna guess what I'm told gets the most reaction? You guessed it: The floors.

What do you think? Would you ever try something like this in your house? I'm wondering if you could do something like this below grade because I think this could be a perfect flooring solution for the finished part of our basement.


P.S. Sorry for the cell phone pictures on these. I thought it would be too weird to take the camera in the store and start snapping photos of the floor.