Basement flooring?

Just bought a house in November and am fully engrossed in the improvements in between Wartburg work days.

I need to finish the basement floor. The basement had been previously fully finished and well used, and had carpet glued to the floor. The carpet was removed before I bought the house leaving a slightly sticky glue residue on the floor that just is NOT coming off. I've tried removers and they just soften it enough to spread it out and make a sticky mess, and I have nearly 800 square feet down there to deal with.

The basement is a slab floor, below grade. It was built with french drain channels to 2 sump pumps on opposite corners, which don't run often. There doesn't seem to be an ongoing water problem, I've seen pictures fromthe previous owners, they had carpet and kids toys and a sofas and cabinets and a big TV down there.

I want to have the big half of the basement as a "Bonus room", which we will use as a home gym. The other half will be a workshop for my woodworking tools and whatnot. On this side of the floor I'll probably just put down some commercial vinyl tile as a cheap and durable solution for the workshop.

On the other half I'm having a hard time deciding. I really don't like carpeting in a basement long term. Most Vinyl just looks soooo cheap and ugly. Hardwood is also not usually appropriate for a basement, but if I use a underlayment and make a floating floor it should be OK with the right wood, something engineered or Cork. I've thought of ceramic tile but that will be hard and cold and uneven. I just found something called Trafficmaster Allure which is vinyl but doesn't look horrible.

Any advice on how to proceed? I'd like to keep the "nice" side to less than $3/sq if possible and I'll be doing the work myself in true grassroots spirit.

Home depot has a flooring line called allure, it's vinyl flooring, just not in the typical roll or peel and stick squares, it's planks, with edges that overlap so you don't get the shrinkage separation. It comes in just about any finish you could want from wood, to stone tile look. It's floating so you could put some type of underlayment under it, won't disentigrate if it gets wet like a laminate, or engineered wood. And if you use the stuff they keep in stock on the shelves, it's fairly economical. I plan on using it when I redo the kitchen and bathroom in the spring. PM me if you want more info on it, all I can say is if you decide to go with it, read the directions, it's not hard to put down, I did a demo for a customer in the store the other day, just take your time and place them right the first time, then take something like a carpet roller and go over the seams, per trafficmaster the adhesive bond is supposed to get stronger and stronger the more you walk on it.

Jezum, I can't believe I just pitched a HD product....I've been there waaaay too long now.

Have you considered sticking with concrete? We're (slowly) finishing our basement and we spent ages trying to decide what to do with it...she wanted carpet, but as you said, I had fears of the "what if" should water ever get in there. A good friend of mine finished his basement with hydronic heating in stained concrete. The hydronic heating adds a fair bit of expense, but in his case and our case, that was part of the plan anyway. Anyway, the concrete was polished and stained a dark brown (after several applications) and it came out looking pretty cool. Depending on your expecations (in-floor heat or not, polished or not, etc.) it can range from really cheap to not cheap at all.

Bryce

I like the idea of a stained concrete floor. Any sort of floor covering in a basement just seems like a bad idea to me. You can rent a floor grinder (kind of like a polisher, except more aggressive) that will probably remove the adhesive residue.

I'm going to do a pitch for something that is available in HD. I work as a vendor in Depot all day. One of the best bang for your buck is Dri-Core. It is $1.50 per sq. ft and you can do it yourself in an afternoon. It is essentially tongue and groove. It will warm the floor up to 6 degrees and help with water traffic underneath. Spinout probably has dealt with this product before also.

http://www.dricore.com

Bryce - I would love to finish the concrete nicely, that was my original plan when I bought the house, but it was foiled by how horriffic it will be to remove the glue residue currently on the floor.

Spinout - I saw that today when at HD. I'm concerned about it coming up at the corners and durability and whatnot, but was very interested. Have you had many complaints from people who have bought it?

No, not really. Everything I've heard about it, has been good. That being said, I only do the inventory management for the flooring department, and don't hear every story, quick google search revealed a few horror stories from a few years ago, but other than that I've heard nothing but good from it. To give you an idea, I've seen prob a dozen special order engineered/laminate orders come back, I have NEVER seen a special allure order come back. You are supposed to trim it out like any other flooring, ie base molding or quarter round at least. I had completely forgotten about about the whole staining route, but again the adhesive could be a @#$@#$ to get off, the grinder idea is a good one, just have a few friends with good backs on standby to move it up and down stairs, if it's anything like a floor buffer a few cases of beer and friends could at least prove amusing while working. The other thing I've seen that I like is the special order vinyl flooring, not the traditional stuff, but the stuff that's supposed to feel like it's got an underlayment already. Add another layer of underlayment under it and I imagine it would be like walking on pillows, or at least one of the all day long standing up anti stress mat's. I don't know how the finish on that stuff would hold up under kid, dog, heavy item abuse though.

the allure stuff is chinese. strike one

strike two is not all the planks are exactly alike so you can get gaps in between them. for typical homeowner joe blow install i guess thats ok but for paying customers i couldnt deal with it.

strike three is it requires being rolled by a 100# roller or you void the warranty, which is another way for the stupid depot to get your money.

strike four is it is made in china.

other than that, the one time i used it the customer purchased it and just had us do the install. they were happy with the finished product, i was not thrilled with the size differences in the pieces.

i vote for tile or stained concrete. you can get the goo off with a wirebrush or floor scrubber or something.

I'm going with the stained concrete too. You've seen my great room off the back of the house which we ripped up the carpet and have been reviewing all the different options and I keep coming back to the stained concrete.

You can rent (or hire someone) machines to resurface the concrete and get all the goo off. Its worth it for a floor that will look good and last a loooooong time.

And for us its pet friendly (ie. easy cleanup)

I just spent 6-weeks this fall cleaning mastic adhesive off my concrete floor & I'll save you the trouble and expense I went through:

Go to Menards(though they probably sell this at HD or Lowes) and get a couple gallon jugs of Krud Kutter cleaner(not the adhesive remover, just the plain detergent stuff), a razor floor scraper, a floor buffer, and a wet/dry vac. Mop the Krud Kutter on about a 10'-square area & let it set for 10-minutes or so, the adhesive comes right up like using paint stripper on furniture! After you get the whole floor done, go back over it another time with the Krud Kutter, but this time hit it with the buffer to loosen up all the remaining goo, then vacuum up the resulting mess.

Of course, if you're going to stain/epoxy/paint, you'll still need to go through the scrubbing/etching process, but the adhesive comes up pretty easy with the right tools.

I went with carpet that has a pad build in. Can't think of the brand to save my life, but it came from lowes. Low cut and trimmed to fit the room.

I had a stained concrete for a few years, but then wanted something "warmer".Originally I was going to put down some foam backed indoor/outdoor carpet, but for not much more I went to Lumber Liquidators and got a smoking deal on a laminate. There's a thin foam like junk that goes down first then start laying down the pieces. It ended up being killer. I furred out the walls to hide the ugly trench drains and framed the sump pit to hide it behind a bifold door. Part is partitioned off for the washer and dryer and storage, the rest is some dusty exercise equipment that may get used someday and most of it is my man cave. Big projection TV, small refrigerator, small stereo, couch and chair. It wasn't much$$, and not even that much time. I didn't use any drywall, in case it got damp, I didn't want mold growing. I got some really cheap paneling-it's easy to work with- and painted it. That, and some bargain wallpaper, really dressed it up and it looks great.

I was thinking of dri-core as well. Not cheap, depending on the square footage. Then just leave it as is in the shop space and maybe put some carpet or laminate flooring over it in the finished space. If you can't get the sticky crap off, then you don't want to put laminate flooring over it since it needs to float a bit.

Oh yeah... if you live in an "insect area" - like in the South where roaches can be a problem - I probably wouldn't do this. However, here in the NE where that is less of an issue, it could work well.

In my basement (in SE PA), I'm planning to go with 1/2" rubber work-mat tiles. While my basement is usually dry, if something should happen, the tiles will come up easily to let things dry out.

Sonic, use a floor grinder/polisher to remove the adhesive. It shouldn't be a problem (you're just not using a big enough hammer :)). Then polish the concrete, stain and seal. I don't like the way floating floors feel, even on level concrete you can still tell they're floating.

If you want to stain concrete, do you want to polish it first? It seems like concrete doesn't take to well to staining (only a small portion of what makes up concrete will actually stain), which is actually what makes stained concrete look really good. But it seems that if you polish it first, you may be changing the surface enough to affect the staining procedure.

Polished concrete looks great, stained concrete looks great, I haven't seen where formerly polished concrete has been stained though, the comment is merely speculation on my part.