Agreed. I hate Wall to Wall…It looks cheaply/quickly put together most of the time.
In that sense…i wanted to bring a nice warm feeling to the basement and felt a quality carpet/pad would do this. The last thing i wanted to do was laminate on the whole area, and have it feel cold with the echo of all the noises. It wasn’t much a debate in my head, just something that seemed right to me upon first thought.
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i don’t mind wall-to wall…but with the shape of the room and the colors i was going with…i feel space would have looked dry and boring.
closet shelving and floor finished last week:
That is a really nice storage system. Where did you pick that up?
Home Depot, martha friggen stewart collection.
Hallway updates: put the drop ceiling in which still needs a recessed light, installed the utility (electrial box, FiOs, Water main, Alarm System) closet doors, finished the flooring. Still need to do the baseboards, trim work, and some final paint.
:tup: I really like the Scheme.
Any rating on those shelves? My Fiancé would definitely try to overload that unit.
getting to the bathroom now. I took on the task of cutting 18" square tile down into strips for the shower wall. I have a tile design i want to achieve in my head and this was the answer. 1-1/4" x 18" strips and 3"x18" strips.
tedious.
Thanks. i’m not sure on the rating, but they are pretty rigid and hang off of a horizontal mounting bracket that runs the length of the closet and is screwed into the studs.
framed out the shower for the concrete pour this weekend. The plan is to finish the concrete and leave it decorative so i dyed it using pigment powder so that when it fully cures it’s a color similar to the tile, dark grey.
the framing: using melamine board to help with surface finish and mold release. I used some 1x4’s to give me my level line for the top of the slab around the edges.
+
reinforcing mesh on the curb portion:
took A LOT longer then i had planned because my barrel mixer didn’t mix the finer aggregate (sand) as well as i had hoped. i would use a mortar mixer next time. Started mixing at 10am didn’t finish until 6pm.
ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES!! i felt pressured for time at one point and thought “oh well” didn’t think it would hurt this bad. My skin is peeling off today from the strong alkaline mixture. Learned after the fact that it’s a good idea to clean your hands with vinegar to neutralize.
that’s it for now. I’m going to let it cure for a few days before i pull the mold. I’m sure i’ll have airbubbles and gaps, but i’ll just mix up a putty and fill them in. After that it’s polish to a finish that’s not too slippery when wet then add a couple coats of sealer.
You must have a BADASS tile saw, cause it would suck to cut all those strips!
It’s an MK 10" Diamond blade wet saw with 18" cut stroke. It cut very well…took about 5-6hrs to cut all the 350+ strips.
Looking good Josh. This is motivating me to do my bathroom.
How did you create the pitch to the drain? Free hand?
basically. I saw a lot of “helping” products out there, but most of them are intended to be tiled over.
What i did was set my drain height so that it the concrete would be about 1- 1/2" thick at its thinest, then raised the drain an 1/8" before throwing in the concrete so i could tighten the drain down into the soft concrete creating a better seal. then i took my farthest of the floor points from the center, which was aproximately 3’ (Technically the proper drainage slope is 1/4" per foot) giving me .75" plus my 1.5" at the center to give me a perimeter height of about 2.25" around the shower which is where i located those 1x4 boards. Having those to points i just troweled the concrete until i had a straight slope into the drain using a straight edge as a reference. the slope varies as you go around because the required slope is at the far ends and the sides of the shower that are close to the drain have the same difference in grade height, just over a shorter distance. you follow?
I do follow.
I like the idea of using 1x4s to get your level line. I know if I was doing it I would have thought a pencil line would be good enough. But now I can see that the pencil line would not have done shit to keep the top edge straight.
Lots of good tricks in here. :tup:
For the curb reinforcement, is that more so the slab does not shift out of the shower over time? If so, do you think re-rod, staked into the foundation, might have helped too or is that overkill?
I originally had a pencil line…but glad i didn’t use just that. The black dyed concrete would have covered it quickly and i would have been digging to find the pencil line.
I put the mesh in just to give the corner edges a bit more strength over time to help prevent the curb from developing cracks. The 2x4’s on edge were anchored into the concrete floor using 6" x 1/4" Tapcon screws. BTW, I had the 2x4’s there for the sole purpose of giving me a surface to staple the liner to. Rebar would work too, but IMO would have been overkill
I like what you are doing - keep it up!!!
started the tiling this weekend.
installed the radiant heating elements. SUPER easy, highly recommended. should be nice come winter:
dry layout of the tiles so everything would fit and i wouldn’t have to run outside to the tile saw mid process.
only took about 2hrs to get laid out. just a recommendation if anyone plans on using radiant heating element matting:
1.) apply mortar directly to the elements pushing it through the mesh to make sure it bonds well to the floor
2.) level off the mortar smooth with a trowel using the heating elements as a thickness gauge
3.) butter the back of the tiles and trowel the grooves, don’t try troweling groves over the elements.
4.) then just stick the tiles as normal
started tiling the shower. took a lot more time then i was expecting because of stopping to cut tiles and trying to work with the mortar.
So far everything is looking as i had hoped. After the tile is set i’ll be polsihing and finishing the shower base.
Looks awesome. Can’t wait to see it finished.
I really like that staggered look. :tup:
Yeah, i did a the same staggered layout with the laminate flooring too. Each one is offset by 1/3 the length. The layout in the shower will continue to be somewhat random.