Hi all! I am in desperate need of opinions about what to do with floor in my bedroom. For background, I bought a house in July, had my budget well researched, and discovered the prior owners had placed their furniture in such a way to make my budget completely inaccurate.
So, my current dilemma is this - I have no bedroom, and have been sharing with my 13 year old son. The room with my flooring problem will be my bedroom. I have gutted it, new drywall, etc. There was peel and stick total chipped crap tile in there, which I peeled up. Did some scraping and cleaning, and the new peel and stick won’t stick. Like, not very well at all.
I’m not inclined to spend a lot of money renting scrapers and buying products - the reason I went with peel and stick was to make it livable until I could do the Big Remodel. But I can’t not have a floor. Further testing with scraping and cheap solutions like boiling water have shown that it will take me 150+ hours to scrape the entire area, which is also a no for a peel and stick floor.
So, here are my options:
Lay the new peel and stick back down, finish the room, and move in until sometime in 2019 when I can get a nice floor? Cons: I’ll have a crappy bedroom (cheap rugs on peeling up floor). Further complicated by the fact that there’s an adjoining bathroom with an even worse adhesive situation - do I just forget that entirely and put down rugs and be totally low rent?
scrape for the next three months for a cheap floor that I’m going to replace anyway? I’m not inclined to do that since it will give me another three months of room sharing and dealing with boxes.
spring for renting a floor scraper, sander, adhesive remover etc. Also not inclined to do so, since at the end of all that, I’d have spent almost as much as it would have taken to get a nice float floor.
And this is all complicated by the fact that I am ashamed of my house. And the fact that I am a 41 year old professional who shares a room with my son. A 13 year old that needs privacy. I just want a semi-nice house I can invite people to, and not feel embarrassed.
And I could use some words of encouragement. I’ve been dealing with this floor thing for a month and my self esteem is cratering.
Low as possible. If rugs are the solution, I’m thinking TJ Max at $50. A gallon of adhesive is like $50, and adhesive remover is $30, and I’ve read they don’t work well.
Put 1/4 inch plywood entirely over the current floor, with filler where the pieces of plywood meet.
Then you have a decent subfloor that you can put any kind of floor covering on. For the bathroom, I’d suggest ceramic tile. For the bedroom, consider either carpet or some hardwood (or hardwood-looking) flooring.
You may find that this increases the height of the floor inside the room, so you will have to spend a bit to get an appropriate door jamb at the entrance.
Concrete slab - it’s solid and level. I’ve looked into a 1/4” subfloor by I’m hesitant to drill every 6-9 inches into that. I don’t know if glue would work and keep it sturdy.
I also looked into carpet remnant, but they’re way more expensive than I thought.
I know this sounds like a bunch of no thanks-es, but I appreciate all of it. I just need to maybe get over that its going to look shitty for a while?
Linoleum. Okay the current equivalent. It’s cheap, easy to install yourself, comes in a lot of not offensive choices, (wood floor look a like!) and is a really quick solution. And when you’re ready for a big reno it’s a snap to remove, and boom you’re ready to lay whatever the next choice is.
The good news is concrete isn’t subject to termite damage … hehe …
Laminate flooring can be had for less than a buck a foot, that’s competitive with peel-and-shtick … maybe a couple bucks per foot for the padded kind, so you don’t feel the roughness from below …
How many square feet are we talking about? … something a couple of square hay bales would cover? … corrugated cardboard? …
“3) spring for renting a floor scraper, sander, adhesive remover etc. Also not inclined to do so, since at the end of all that, I’d have spent almost as much as it would have taken to get a nice float floor.”
Look for halfway decent old area rugs at house and estate sales or Craig’s list and go with a “layered rugs” look, overlapping them to cover the whole floor. It often comes off as eclectic or Bohemian.
2)Painted canvas floorcloth. (Images.) Often used in kitchens and we’ve had one under our dining room table for years. It can go wall to wall whatever shape you want. Keep it simple but it can be whatever color or design you want. Stencils are often used.
This is the quickest and cheapest solution. Don’t waste time and money putting down a 2nd rate floor that you plan on replacing. Cleaning your existing floor is not out of your reach, but it does take time and money. If you can find old rugs (torn up wall to wall) it is simple to cut to fit. Throw area rugs on top.
Overlay with a 1/4" plywood subfloor. paint the subfloor with concrete flooring paint and throw down a few throw rugs in the pathways. It can actually look very nice like that and won’t require any prep when the permanent floor goes down.
Depending on where you live, you could post on a Freecycle Facebook page or Craigslist and ask for used carpeting that someone is removing. Many people replace carpet that’s not even in particularly bad shape because of color or renovations.
I’d never heard of this before, but this sounds really cool!
And useful in our present situation - the linoleum on our kitchen floor is showing its age, and we can see a full kitchen renovation coming a few years down the road but don’t really want to launch into it quite yet. This would be a great way to fill the gap.
MMMM mastic on concrete. A company I worked for some years ago had to deal with this once. We ended up just contracting the job out as being more cost effective. IRRC it took the contractor about 2 days with a power scraper to get the floor clean (12x12 room) I would go with the suggested floated laminate flooring. Of course with the adhesive there, it may not be floating anymore when you go to replace it, ummm just to protect the floor from moisture (concrete is porous) I would recommend a layer of vapor barrier between the slab and any flooring you put in (just in case the slab wasn’t seal before the mastic was applied). Happily a vapor barrier will prevent a floating floor or rug from becoming glued to the slab.
My aunt had a laminate floor in her dining room and living room in her hundred-year-old house. My cousin and I cleaned it real good, and used pieces of other same-thickness laminate square tile cut up and shoved in the holes that had been chipped out of the original tile. It didn’t have to look good or even fit snugly, and we didn’t use glue. We just needed there to not be gouges/holes where the old tile had chipped away.
Then we put down a not-too-expensive foam pad and went to work putting in an affordable laminate “wood” floor for her. This was about 10 years ago and it still looks great, even though it was not the highest quality stuff and it is in a high-traffic area.
I think a floating laminate floor would be good for you. You and your son can DEFINITELY do it yourselves. It might come out nicer than you think, and you need to plan on your 2019 plan not working - have something that you can live with for more than 2 years if you don’t have the money when you think you will.
You can do it in a weekend or over a couple days during his winter break and Christmas can be spent in your own separate rooms! Yay!
The reno show “Knock it Off” has done the painted canvas floorclothes. They got a canvas painters tarp, primed it, then painted it. It was fantastic! And inexpensive!
