Beginning the great basement makeover...

It has begun!  After the cleanup and sorting of the stuff in Rudy's old workshop, the conversion to a lovely sewing room has begin.  I had been thinking about it and making plans and looking at laminate flooring so I was ready to hit the ground running.

My oldest son, Rob, is arriving later today from Alaska.  He is going to be here a week and we will be working on several projects but basically getting the sewing room set up and preparing the downstairs bedroom for a floor similar to the one that is now in the sewing room.

Rob has become quite handy living off grid in Alaska, so we will be tackling some wiring and making a design wall or two in the room.  But Saturday, Danny Lantz and his son, Darren, came to the house and laid the new floor.  This is something they do as part of the side jobs, so they came to quickly do the job that might have taken Rob and I the whole week. They started after 10AM and finished before 5PM.

Since it was the standard cement floor in the basement, I wanted something that could deal with damp.  I have become a big fan of DIY television and had seen, in several of the shows, a product called DriCore.  It is plywood with a plastic backing that has feet like protrusions on the bottom which keep the wood up off the floor and also allows air to flow and moisture to evaporate.  It creates a nice sub-floor that is perfect for a nice application like laminate... what I am doing.

So, after emptying the truck I got 80 2' by 2' squares of DriCore.  Then a day or so later, I got 15 boxes of a very nice looking 'hickory' laminate flooring that was a special buy at Home Depot for $.96 a square foot as well as the underlayment.  I was ready.

This is how the basement looked when I started.  Rudy had some nice tools... band say, drill press, table saw and router table.  There were two work benches, the one you see clearly was where he crafted his remote control planes during the long, cold winters.  I added a sewing table and a cutting table to the room when I sold the Maryland house.  But it was pretty well junked up.

I gave Rudy's tools to Danny.  He and his beautiful wife, Marji, have done so much for me since Rudy died, it was the least I could do.  There was a weight bench and weights.  They went to Marji & Danny's grandson.  (I could have sold them, I guess, but I am not comfortable having strangers coming to my house.)  I have thrown out junk and sorted through smaller stuff.  I got the floor swept out several times... it amazes me how dusty and dirty basement floors are.  The more you sweep, the more dirt comes up.  It seemed to create it's own dust!  But Saturday morning it looked like this...

Danny and Darren were here by 10AM and went right to work.  They did some calculating and I helped them figure out how to lay the DriCore.  It comes all connected but you put it down like bricks.  One row across and then cut a square in half to the seams do not meet.  Once we got it down, it went quickly.  In the beginning, until they goot into the groove, I even installed whole blocks myself.  Not hard to do at all.  They did the floor in thirds.  DriCore then underlayment finished with laminate, then DriCore, underlayment and laminate until finished.

I noticed, as the day progressed, that the sounds got quieter and quieter from the basement.  The climate in the room changed too.  Probably my imagination, but I know it will be warmer... that was commented many times in the reviews of the DriCore on the Home Depot web site.

They worked hard and in the end, this is what I now have in my sewing room.....

Beautiful.... Rob and I will work hard to finish it off!  I am so excited.  Stay tuned for more picture progress.