Murder on the Cork Floor

(Something to listen to while you scroll)

Having successfully floored the guestroom and raised floor in the bonus room using the levelling concrete, it was time to address the primary bedroom/bonus room space. 

                                               

We had already done the dance of having our bedroom initially in the bonus room only to have to move it into the primary when we had the drywall ceiling installed, now we needed to do the dance a few more times, finishing the bonus then moving everything into there while finishing the primary only to move everything back. It's not unlike one of those car park puzzle browser games where shuffling the cars back and forth in the exact right pattern frees you up to move on. Our particular batch of obstacles was just a picante mixture of the mundane, existentially horrific, and surreal.  

Unlike in the guestroom, Brie installed two layers of underlayment to both create a vapor barrier between the concrete and the cork and to provide some extra height as there was some concern that the levelling concrete hadn't come up far enough to adequately be even with the bedroom floor. We discovered that it also had the added bonus of reducing some of the walking noise across the cork. This of course means we're going to eventually relay the floor in the guestroom with the underlayment, but it'll be quick work now that the pieces are cut.

Speaking of cutting, a little background: we've been storing the cork boxes in The Room, which is neither insulated nor air conditioned. So we move portions of flooring into the house a few days in advance of the need to allow the material to acclimate to the humidity and temperature of the house. Oh and Brie bought an IKEA table off of craigslist for $50 to use as a stopgap kitchen/dining room solution except it was waaaay smaller than advertised so though it sits in the dining area, I've been using it as the jigsaw and circ saw cutting surface. There have been one or two accidental alterations to the table.

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With the bonus room floored, we cleared out the primary and Brie set to edging it out with the base color. She was set from the early going that the bedroom would be dark and rich and we've ended up with a 'wrought iron,' sort of a dark blue infused dark gray. We've been together 11 years this month, but her overly sappy graffiti is just toooooo much. Time to show her the door.

I finished up the walls with the roller, it ended taking 3 coats due mostly to the ancient white paint soaking everything up. We took up the baseboards and the floor heaters as prep and then Brie patched the molded out drywall caused by the leak in the primary bathroom (see a very early post for more info on that).

We took up the nasty carpet to reveal the gorgeous asbestos tile underneath. Truly a masterpiece of mid 20th century design!

Finding the underlayment such a noise reducer we started there and Brie connected the two rooms. The unfortunate discovery was that we had not built up the bonus room flooring quite high enough and there's a clear dip when transitioning rooms. SOOOOOO, we're going to pull up the flooring, lay down some MDF or more levelling concrete and then relay the floor. Which won't take any real amount of time since all the flooring has been pulled, measured, and cut. We want it done right and as I said to Brie, of the resources of time, money, and labor, we have near endless time and labor so this is no big deal. 

Worth noting, as seen below, that Ramona and Walt continue to grow more comfortable with one another. He now routinely sits and snuggles up to her once she's found a spot on the bed or couch.  

We wrapped up the bedroom in just a couple of days and have started moving in some of the new pieces. I'll put up a post with some of the pieces we've ordered (and more that we've rejected).

S.