Hello fellow Rummer owners,
Can anyone recommend a contractor that specializes in interior concrete work?
This is my situation: My master bedroom has wall-to-wall carpet and I recently had the sliding door replaced in that room. I wanted to check the underside of the carpet nearest the door to see if mold/mildew had formed as a result of condensation running down the surface of the old slider. I did find some black mold/mildew, but I also found that the tack strips for the carpet had been NAILED into the concrete. The first attempt at nailing in the tack strips was done too close to the edge (where the slab meets the 2x4 that forms the base of the walls), which cracked and broke up the concrete. More tack strips were added a few inches further back from the edge. These are secured into the cement and have held the carpet in place. Based on the amount of dead bugs and spider webs in the broken concrete regions, I'd say there are some conduits to the outside world.
I'd like to remove the carpet, carpet pad, tack strips and broken concrete debris and have the floor repaired and finished into a nice concrete floor, possibly with some sort of self-leveling liquid concrete repair compound (such as FlexSet).
Has anybody done this before? I'm seeking recommendations and advice.
Thanks,
JW
ALSO:
Hi Stan,
For the Rummer Network, I have a project that I'm looking for recommendations and ideas. I plan to remove all the old vinyl floor tiles and carpeting in all the rooms but the bathrooms (actually one of the bathrooms may make sense to do) in my Rummer this summer. I would like to have an acid etch on the concrete floors. I assume there will be some grinding required - so the messy work will be done when the house is empty.
Has anyone had this done in their Rummer? I would like to hear from you.I am interested in knowing who you recommend or don't recommend? I would like to know what you did and what you would do differently. Did you do a design with different color shades? Are there any short comings with doing an acid etch?
That would be a lot to type, so I'm willing call you and talk.
Thank you,
KS
Hi JW,
We are in the process of “refinishing” the concrete floors in the home. In my humble opinion, the perimeter “craters” are a natural occurrence of the design/construction of the Rummers. The first principle is the floor needs to expand/contract because of the in-floor heating. So the floor movement is at the perimeter of the house. After having ALL floor coverings removed at our home, we have found that to be the case.
Next, with the wall finish being thin and the location of the foundation, the expansion joint material was allowed to float below the concrete during construction – looks good! Because of the thin amount of concrete over the joint material and next to the wall, the expansion/contraction of the floor and carpet nailing strips will cause the concrete to fracture and create craters.
In our home during the prep work for staining the floors, the contractor has removed the loose craters and some of the old expansion joint material. He then placed a high compression foam/expansion joint material and uses his own mixture of epoxy and sand to fill the area.
The cover up of the now visible expansion joint is replacing the paneling with drywall and then using a thicker baseboard molding. For the sliding doors, the plan is to have the replacement doors have a wider sill to cover the expansion joint. I have attached a diagram (see below) of what I think the cross section of the foundation/floor looks like.
In our home, the drywall is hung (the interior door jams will need to be replaced because of the thicker walls) and we are currently in the floor staining phase. You are welcome to stop by the home and have a look. Michael Rogers (http://fauxtoday.com/), who is the artisan doing the floors will be finishing up his work at the home this week.
KS
Can anyone recommend a contractor that specializes in interior concrete work?
This is my situation: My master bedroom has wall-to-wall carpet and I recently had the sliding door replaced in that room. I wanted to check the underside of the carpet nearest the door to see if mold/mildew had formed as a result of condensation running down the surface of the old slider. I did find some black mold/mildew, but I also found that the tack strips for the carpet had been NAILED into the concrete. The first attempt at nailing in the tack strips was done too close to the edge (where the slab meets the 2x4 that forms the base of the walls), which cracked and broke up the concrete. More tack strips were added a few inches further back from the edge. These are secured into the cement and have held the carpet in place. Based on the amount of dead bugs and spider webs in the broken concrete regions, I'd say there are some conduits to the outside world.
I'd like to remove the carpet, carpet pad, tack strips and broken concrete debris and have the floor repaired and finished into a nice concrete floor, possibly with some sort of self-leveling liquid concrete repair compound (such as FlexSet).
Has anybody done this before? I'm seeking recommendations and advice.
Thanks,
JW
ALSO:
Hi Stan,
For the Rummer Network, I have a project that I'm looking for recommendations and ideas. I plan to remove all the old vinyl floor tiles and carpeting in all the rooms but the bathrooms (actually one of the bathrooms may make sense to do) in my Rummer this summer. I would like to have an acid etch on the concrete floors. I assume there will be some grinding required - so the messy work will be done when the house is empty.
Has anyone had this done in their Rummer? I would like to hear from you.I am interested in knowing who you recommend or don't recommend? I would like to know what you did and what you would do differently. Did you do a design with different color shades? Are there any short comings with doing an acid etch?
That would be a lot to type, so I'm willing call you and talk.
Thank you,
KS
Hi JW,
We are in the process of “refinishing” the concrete floors in the home. In my humble opinion, the perimeter “craters” are a natural occurrence of the design/construction of the Rummers. The first principle is the floor needs to expand/contract because of the in-floor heating. So the floor movement is at the perimeter of the house. After having ALL floor coverings removed at our home, we have found that to be the case.
Next, with the wall finish being thin and the location of the foundation, the expansion joint material was allowed to float below the concrete during construction – looks good! Because of the thin amount of concrete over the joint material and next to the wall, the expansion/contraction of the floor and carpet nailing strips will cause the concrete to fracture and create craters.
In our home during the prep work for staining the floors, the contractor has removed the loose craters and some of the old expansion joint material. He then placed a high compression foam/expansion joint material and uses his own mixture of epoxy and sand to fill the area.
The cover up of the now visible expansion joint is replacing the paneling with drywall and then using a thicker baseboard molding. For the sliding doors, the plan is to have the replacement doors have a wider sill to cover the expansion joint. I have attached a diagram (see below) of what I think the cross section of the foundation/floor looks like.
In our home, the drywall is hung (the interior door jams will need to be replaced because of the thicker walls) and we are currently in the floor staining phase. You are welcome to stop by the home and have a look. Michael Rogers (http://fauxtoday.com/), who is the artisan doing the floors will be finishing up his work at the home this week.
KS
floorcrosssection.pdf | |
File Size: | 16 kb |
File Type: |
Hi Stan,
The guy I have doing the floor is an exceptional artist.
Here is a URL to his concrete floors. http://www.fauxtoday.com/concrete.html
The one design that got our attention is: http://www.fauxtoday.com/imagepages/concrete10.html
Turns out that Michael is located in Salem - lucky us!!
This is an expensive project, but I think in the long run it will be worth it.
The one think we are doing is covering up the exposed aggregate that is inside.
The craters around the inside floor perimeter is a challenge. I think Michael has a good solution using epoxy and sand. The SkimStone product (http://www.skimstone.com/), a micro top, will cover all the floors.
We have a design that is similar to the design that we like. We will be putting a design in the living room, dining room and the kitchen area. Those rooms are all joined together and I think our design will work quite well.
Hi KS,
Sorry for the delay. Life is so busy this time of year for our family. Anyway...
I will share with you our experience and if you have further questions or clarifications feel free to contact us again.
My husband and I removed all the vinyl original tiles with a crow bar and a lot of elbow grease. We checked into the aspestos (sp?) issue with the health dept. and they said we would be fine if we wetted them down well and wore masks. It was not that huge of a job. There was a significant amount of dark brown glue/mastic that remained which had to be removed. We were told about a product Beane-Doo, which is soy based and comes highly recommended for this type of job. We were told it can be tricky as far as the timing of removing it, etc. therefore we decided to hire this out as well as the rest of the job. Until you get that glue up you cannot be certain how much grinding needs to be done. It can be apparently pretty superficial to hardcore, as we ended up having to deal with for other reasons. So here is your chance to learn at our expense, and I mean EXPENSE.
We should have waited and gone with the Picasso of concrete floor design, (this is the gentlemen who gave us the info on Beane-doo and doing it ourselves to save money prior to him coming in to work his magic). He was not available when we wanted to do all this (summer of 06) so we therefore went with our next choice. We checked him out with prior customers, BBB, and Angies list. He checked out, seemed like a nice guy and could work with our schedule. He ended up trying to juggle too many jobs and in so doing he left this Beane-Doo product on our floors for 24 hours, even though I pointed out to him that on the label it said not to exceed 4-6hrs, something like that. He insisted that our glue was so thick that it would be just fine. Well a very long story – 1.5 years long to be exact we, we lived with concrete grindings 4 different times, as they tried to get the Beane-doo out of the slab, lay a new surface, regrind, etc. Being an oil based product it had absorbed into the slab so deep that nothing would adhere to it for any period of time. We had another thinset type product applied after 2 grindings and it flaked up and wouldn’t take stain. He kept trying this product and that, tried to talk us into an entire different product that looked like rubber floors, you name it, he wouldn’t take responsibility for it AT ALL! One of the products he applied was for pool surrounds, which made the floor all gritty?! Yeah, that was nice. Back to grinding. When all else failed he actually requested that we call in John Fotheringham (the Picasso) to see if he’d know what to do! He came, assessed the situation and gave us the bad news that potentially nothing, not even ceramic tiles would stick ,if the beane-doo couldn’t be extracted! Back to the ugly floating floors we had removed in much of the house! We also had samples chemically tested back east to see what was going on and if it could be fixed. It couldn’t.
Eventually we fired Denis Wryn and hired John to come in and see if he can rescue this floor. He agreed to give it a try but wasn’t making promises and couldn’t guarantee we could achieve the color we wanted as the floor had now been so altered it would be hard to know what colors may come up from the slab. We moved forward. It turned out considerably darker than we wanted. We were after a greyish and green tone, we got dark chocolate with some amber highlights. We could have learned to live with it, however in a matter of 5 days the floor became like fly paper!
Our daughter would literally stick to the floor when she’d watch TV and you could hear her skin peeling away from the floor like a piece of tape! Then all the dust started sticking to those sticky areas. Yeah, that was attractive, let me tell you. We ended up suing Denis Wrynn. We wanted him to pay to have a suitable floor installed of our choosing, not going crazy mind you. We basically just settled for him to have to give us the money back and we had to start the whole process over. It was a losing situation and we wanted to have our home back.
The good news is ceramic tile will stick to the floor! We found some we love very much and the end result is we are as happy we think as we’d have been had the concrete staining turned out.
Our recommendation to you or any Rummer owner is hire the best (and he isn’t anymore expensive by the way) or if you take it on yourself, be VERY educated about the chemical compounds you want to apply, and good luck!. If it were in a garage, basement or someplace that you didn’t really care if it didn’t turn out that well, then I’d say go for it and see what colors emerge from your slab, but being in the main areas of your home, you will be far and away ahead to pay to have it done right.
John Fotheringham used to be available through Ultra Quiet Floors at 503.253.6373. His cell was and maybe still is: 503.706.3435. He is quite the character, a bit quirky like most artists I guess. If you go check out George Moreland Plumbing down in NW Portland you will see the magic he does. This is sort of what we were after. I can’t remember the exact amount but we had about 1,000 sqrft and I think the original bid for everything was about $5,000. Obviously it cost us a lot more in the long run.
Denis Wrynn of Rose City Bomanite is who you want to AVOID! In fact he is now running his business under this new name, as it was something else when we contracted him. He told us we’d put him out of business if we sued him – maybe he shut those doors and opened these new ones.
One other guy who has really good work ethics I hear and does nice work, but I wouldn’t compare his stuff to Johns, at least back when we did it, is The Floor Guy. You can find him on the web.I would suggest taking a tour of the clients they have done and speaking with the clients if possible. It is well worth your time!
I hope this was helpful!
Good luck,
SW
Hey!
We used a guy named Bob, and his partner John. The company's name is Pride Construction. They are some of the best in the business. They are a bit more spendy than other companies, but there work is a honestly a thousand times better. They were some of the first in the business years ago and they remain in high demand with nothing but word of mouth advertising.
You're welcome to come buy and see our floors if you want to see their work. I know they have done several other Rummers in the neighborhood as well including our neighbor Clair.
Bob's cell is 503-901-0842.
Good luck!
JCM
The grinding is only necessary if your aggregate floors still have the standard "poured" finish. Most Rummer floors were smoothed out more or less, far better than most gargage floors. While having a perfectly smooth and polished floor looks nice, it's also hazardous should any liquid or other viscous fluid falls on the floor. Then you would have a flat waterslide to contend with.
I would say find a 1.5 sq spot and scrubs and clean it as best you can. Wipe it clean and let it dry. Run you hand and/or bare feet across it and see how it feels. Do this again with the concrete damp and wet. If it feels smooth enough, then save alot of time polishing your floor. If I remember it takes about 7-10 hours to polish a floor in a 15x20 room that's been already smoothed down. One way to get the shiny polished look is to use a glazer, which also make the floor a little less slippery when wet. They also make "green" versions since you'll be doing this process inside your living space.
http://www.glaze-n-seal.com/wetlookgreen.html
Acid etching will give you a more natural stone look to your floors, but colors are limited. EcoHaus has paople that could help you do it and do it will out alot of chemical mess.
http://www.ecohaus.com
Try these also:
http://www.concretedecor.net/index.cfm
http://www.skimstone.com/
Here a concrete floor article that should point you inthe right direction:
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/hi_floor_coverings/article/0,2037,DIY_13915_3693708,00.html
Also Renovation Nation on the Planet Green Network does concrete radiant heat floor atleast every other episode. They usually do some sort of treament to them.
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/renovation-nation/
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/steve-thomas-home-questions.html
I hope this will get you started.
AM
The guy I have doing the floor is an exceptional artist.
Here is a URL to his concrete floors. http://www.fauxtoday.com/concrete.html
The one design that got our attention is: http://www.fauxtoday.com/imagepages/concrete10.html
Turns out that Michael is located in Salem - lucky us!!
This is an expensive project, but I think in the long run it will be worth it.
The one think we are doing is covering up the exposed aggregate that is inside.
The craters around the inside floor perimeter is a challenge. I think Michael has a good solution using epoxy and sand. The SkimStone product (http://www.skimstone.com/), a micro top, will cover all the floors.
We have a design that is similar to the design that we like. We will be putting a design in the living room, dining room and the kitchen area. Those rooms are all joined together and I think our design will work quite well.
Hi KS,
Sorry for the delay. Life is so busy this time of year for our family. Anyway...
I will share with you our experience and if you have further questions or clarifications feel free to contact us again.
My husband and I removed all the vinyl original tiles with a crow bar and a lot of elbow grease. We checked into the aspestos (sp?) issue with the health dept. and they said we would be fine if we wetted them down well and wore masks. It was not that huge of a job. There was a significant amount of dark brown glue/mastic that remained which had to be removed. We were told about a product Beane-Doo, which is soy based and comes highly recommended for this type of job. We were told it can be tricky as far as the timing of removing it, etc. therefore we decided to hire this out as well as the rest of the job. Until you get that glue up you cannot be certain how much grinding needs to be done. It can be apparently pretty superficial to hardcore, as we ended up having to deal with for other reasons. So here is your chance to learn at our expense, and I mean EXPENSE.
We should have waited and gone with the Picasso of concrete floor design, (this is the gentlemen who gave us the info on Beane-doo and doing it ourselves to save money prior to him coming in to work his magic). He was not available when we wanted to do all this (summer of 06) so we therefore went with our next choice. We checked him out with prior customers, BBB, and Angies list. He checked out, seemed like a nice guy and could work with our schedule. He ended up trying to juggle too many jobs and in so doing he left this Beane-Doo product on our floors for 24 hours, even though I pointed out to him that on the label it said not to exceed 4-6hrs, something like that. He insisted that our glue was so thick that it would be just fine. Well a very long story – 1.5 years long to be exact we, we lived with concrete grindings 4 different times, as they tried to get the Beane-doo out of the slab, lay a new surface, regrind, etc. Being an oil based product it had absorbed into the slab so deep that nothing would adhere to it for any period of time. We had another thinset type product applied after 2 grindings and it flaked up and wouldn’t take stain. He kept trying this product and that, tried to talk us into an entire different product that looked like rubber floors, you name it, he wouldn’t take responsibility for it AT ALL! One of the products he applied was for pool surrounds, which made the floor all gritty?! Yeah, that was nice. Back to grinding. When all else failed he actually requested that we call in John Fotheringham (the Picasso) to see if he’d know what to do! He came, assessed the situation and gave us the bad news that potentially nothing, not even ceramic tiles would stick ,if the beane-doo couldn’t be extracted! Back to the ugly floating floors we had removed in much of the house! We also had samples chemically tested back east to see what was going on and if it could be fixed. It couldn’t.
Eventually we fired Denis Wryn and hired John to come in and see if he can rescue this floor. He agreed to give it a try but wasn’t making promises and couldn’t guarantee we could achieve the color we wanted as the floor had now been so altered it would be hard to know what colors may come up from the slab. We moved forward. It turned out considerably darker than we wanted. We were after a greyish and green tone, we got dark chocolate with some amber highlights. We could have learned to live with it, however in a matter of 5 days the floor became like fly paper!
Our daughter would literally stick to the floor when she’d watch TV and you could hear her skin peeling away from the floor like a piece of tape! Then all the dust started sticking to those sticky areas. Yeah, that was attractive, let me tell you. We ended up suing Denis Wrynn. We wanted him to pay to have a suitable floor installed of our choosing, not going crazy mind you. We basically just settled for him to have to give us the money back and we had to start the whole process over. It was a losing situation and we wanted to have our home back.
The good news is ceramic tile will stick to the floor! We found some we love very much and the end result is we are as happy we think as we’d have been had the concrete staining turned out.
Our recommendation to you or any Rummer owner is hire the best (and he isn’t anymore expensive by the way) or if you take it on yourself, be VERY educated about the chemical compounds you want to apply, and good luck!. If it were in a garage, basement or someplace that you didn’t really care if it didn’t turn out that well, then I’d say go for it and see what colors emerge from your slab, but being in the main areas of your home, you will be far and away ahead to pay to have it done right.
John Fotheringham used to be available through Ultra Quiet Floors at 503.253.6373. His cell was and maybe still is: 503.706.3435. He is quite the character, a bit quirky like most artists I guess. If you go check out George Moreland Plumbing down in NW Portland you will see the magic he does. This is sort of what we were after. I can’t remember the exact amount but we had about 1,000 sqrft and I think the original bid for everything was about $5,000. Obviously it cost us a lot more in the long run.
Denis Wrynn of Rose City Bomanite is who you want to AVOID! In fact he is now running his business under this new name, as it was something else when we contracted him. He told us we’d put him out of business if we sued him – maybe he shut those doors and opened these new ones.
One other guy who has really good work ethics I hear and does nice work, but I wouldn’t compare his stuff to Johns, at least back when we did it, is The Floor Guy. You can find him on the web.I would suggest taking a tour of the clients they have done and speaking with the clients if possible. It is well worth your time!
I hope this was helpful!
Good luck,
SW
Hey!
We used a guy named Bob, and his partner John. The company's name is Pride Construction. They are some of the best in the business. They are a bit more spendy than other companies, but there work is a honestly a thousand times better. They were some of the first in the business years ago and they remain in high demand with nothing but word of mouth advertising.
You're welcome to come buy and see our floors if you want to see their work. I know they have done several other Rummers in the neighborhood as well including our neighbor Clair.
Bob's cell is 503-901-0842.
Good luck!
JCM
The grinding is only necessary if your aggregate floors still have the standard "poured" finish. Most Rummer floors were smoothed out more or less, far better than most gargage floors. While having a perfectly smooth and polished floor looks nice, it's also hazardous should any liquid or other viscous fluid falls on the floor. Then you would have a flat waterslide to contend with.
I would say find a 1.5 sq spot and scrubs and clean it as best you can. Wipe it clean and let it dry. Run you hand and/or bare feet across it and see how it feels. Do this again with the concrete damp and wet. If it feels smooth enough, then save alot of time polishing your floor. If I remember it takes about 7-10 hours to polish a floor in a 15x20 room that's been already smoothed down. One way to get the shiny polished look is to use a glazer, which also make the floor a little less slippery when wet. They also make "green" versions since you'll be doing this process inside your living space.
http://www.glaze-n-seal.com/wetlookgreen.html
Acid etching will give you a more natural stone look to your floors, but colors are limited. EcoHaus has paople that could help you do it and do it will out alot of chemical mess.
http://www.ecohaus.com
Try these also:
http://www.concretedecor.net/index.cfm
http://www.skimstone.com/
Here a concrete floor article that should point you inthe right direction:
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/hi_floor_coverings/article/0,2037,DIY_13915_3693708,00.html
Also Renovation Nation on the Planet Green Network does concrete radiant heat floor atleast every other episode. They usually do some sort of treament to them.
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/renovation-nation/
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/steve-thomas-home-questions.html
I hope this will get you started.
AM