I don't like drywall. I like plaster. I don't like composite mouldings. I like hardwood. I don't even like prefab mouldings. I like to cut my own. So why would I like something as new-fangled and artificial as engineered flooring?
Actually, I don't. Even though I went through bloody hell to lay those herringbone floors in the living room, solid hardwood is still my first choice. But there were reasons why engineered flooring was the better option for the second floor in my house. One is that I didn't want to add an extra 1.25" to the height of the top stair. That's what would have been required if I'd gone with 3/4" hardwood. I can't count the number of times I've tripped because of uneven stair heights, on one occasion fracturing a shoulder. Also, an engineered floor has a finish at least twice as hard as that of any job-site applied finish. With two big dogs tearing up my hardwood floors downstairs that's not a small selling point for me. However, there's a big "but" with this stuff which I'll get into later.
engineered flooring
17 commentsPhase 7: The Wrath of Details
Submitted by Steve on Fri, 09/08/2006 - 10:36am
Today officially begins the scheduled start of the next major phase of the renovation at Brooklyn Row House: the rebuilding of the master bedroom and upstairs hallway. It started like most of my scheduled projects. In other words, it didn't.
Dykes Lumber, which was given instructions to call me before delivery, arrived yesterday when I must have been out walking the grovelers. Granted, it's a contractor size order but, sheesh, even GC crews take lunch breaks, guys. They didn't call to confirm that they were even delivering yesterday so I could at least hang a note. For that matter, I still don't know what the charge is, although I'm figuring in the $2500 range.
The delivery was rescheduled for Monday which isn't much of a setback because my weekend is shot anyway.
Speak of the devil, the flooring just arrived from Hosking Hardwood: thirteen cartons of Mannington engineered flooring and accessories.
I used Mannington flooring in my office and guest room renovations and the jury's still out with it. I'm already seeing some scratch marks from the dogs' claws. I probably won't be ready to lay it the floor till around Thanksgiving at this rate. Before then I have to make some serious progress on building a new referral management system for Children's Health Fund. At least the flooring will be well acclimated to the house by then.
Dykes Lumber, which was given instructions to call me before delivery, arrived yesterday when I must have been out walking the grovelers. Granted, it's a contractor size order but, sheesh, even GC crews take lunch breaks, guys. They didn't call to confirm that they were even delivering yesterday so I could at least hang a note. For that matter, I still don't know what the charge is, although I'm figuring in the $2500 range.
The delivery was rescheduled for Monday which isn't much of a setback because my weekend is shot anyway.
Speak of the devil, the flooring just arrived from Hosking Hardwood: thirteen cartons of Mannington engineered flooring and accessories.
I used Mannington flooring in my office and guest room renovations and the jury's still out with it. I'm already seeing some scratch marks from the dogs' claws. I probably won't be ready to lay it the floor till around Thanksgiving at this rate. Before then I have to make some serious progress on building a new referral management system for Children's Health Fund. At least the flooring will be well acclimated to the house by then.
Guest Room
Renovation By The Numbers
A few House page viewers asked me to walk them through a typical room renovation. This room already had a lightweight renovation when I moved in and needed to set up my office quickly. Now it will undergo a complete refab for a guest room.
Generally speaking, I have a few fixed strategies for renovation, at least in this house:
- Preserve the plaster whenever possible. Some people do drywall rehabs, then spend a bundle paying someone to skim coat blue board so it looks like plaster. Plaster is superior to drywall for sound and durability so it makes sense to save it.
- Replace old electrical with new BX and boxes. Plastic sheathed cable (NMS)is legal here but I don't like pulling it through nail-strewn walls. NMS also means another wire hookup inside the box.
- New floors.
- New woodwork. See www.interiordoors.com for great deals on architectural hardwood doors.
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| Inspection day. Evidentally, the chapel. | After a week of rudimentary renovation, it became my office. |
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Step One: Demolition
Before I decide what I want to do with the room, I take a prybar, hammer and Sawzall and lay waste to everything that's not going to be rehabilitated. Then you have an empty canvas with which to visualize the new space. This should of course be done on an empty room with the doors closed and sealed around the threshhold. Otherwise you'll find plaster dust in your corn flakes the next morning. It helps to use a powerful window fan set to exhaust mode to create negative pressure inside the room. While Doc Karen complains that I'm too casual about this, wear a dust mask! The ancient grime, mold spores and possible asbestos dust waiting for you behind mouldings, especially over door and window headers, is really nasty stuff. Vacuum often and vent its exhaust out an open window. Step Two: Wall Preparation Scrape all the walls and ceiling, and I mean every square inch of it. I use a thin-bladed 2-inch scraper for this because a wider blade will skip over slight depressions in the wall. It's tedious work but the results will pay off next year when your paint isn't falling off. Use a side light to look for raised or uneven areas in the plaster which could indicate finish coat separation from the base coat. Use the pointy edge of a five-in-one painter's tool (or an old-style beer can opener) to dig a small trench in plaster cracks. This will increase the bonding area for your repair. It will also uncover possibly larger cracks in the base plaster, which will need to be repaired first. Remove all loose debris. If you encounter large sections of loose plaster you have two options: tear it out and replaster or use plaster washers to pull it back in contact with the wood lathing. I only do the latter if demolition might endanger plaster details like corner mouldings or medallions. Plaster washer repairs often lead to more cracks later, especially on ceilings. |
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| Like those walls? This is what happens to five year-old white primer. It's also the answer to the question, "why can't I use primer for finish paint?" | The old radiator was removed and relocated to a cast iron baseboard unit under the windows. I completed demolition and spent the next week patching cracks and loose plaster. The ceiling was a mess due to a roof leak, thanks to a botched satellite dish installation. | |
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| The next job was routing the electrical. The wall outlets are being fed by a new circuit, which I pulled upstairs a couple of years ago. The old aluminum BX in the ceiling fixture was disabled, which required knocking a fair-sized hole in the plaster. A new medallion covered up that mess. | The walls were too damaged to repair conventionally so I taped and skimcoated them. | |
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| Installation of the "window seat". This was built in my shop as three cabinets and screwed together. The tops, which slide off to give access to the radiator, were a bitch to get right. | Constructing the crown moulding for the window pediments. You know, I've done so much of this style of trim over the past five years that I've got it down to a formula now. That has its good and bad points. | |
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| I ran into an issue with the wiring, or rather how to hide it. I had BX for electrical, phone and DSL wiring for the office, the main feed for my satellite dish, the second floor security alarm wiring and two coax cables for the room itself which I had to somehow disguise along this wall. But the wall is plaster over brick. What to do? I decided to build a bump-out with 2x3s and drywall and cap it with an oak shelf. | Trim work completed. The room is starting to get a bit crowded. Here's a construction tip: keep your work space clean. My productivity seems to drop at the inverse square to the number of trip hazards in the room. | |
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| The ceiling fan was installed. The floor was roughed up for the cement leveler in preparation for the new floor. | Fifteen pound builders felt is stapled to the floor to reduce squeaks. | |
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| A Mannington engineered oak floor is laid down using a Spotnails stapler and 1-3/8" staples. | The floor and shoe moulding is done and the wallpaper is up. The wallpaper was problematic, or rather the original stuff was. I picked up the latter at a seedy wallpaper store in Boro Park, hung it that night and three hours later it was peeling off the walls. The pool of rain water inside the store should have been a free clue to the quality of what I was buying. The stuff in the photo is Home Depot standard issue and it went up, and stayed up, without a hitch. | |
