Ventilation Holes in the Subfloor

1. Sealer on the concrete floor
2. Half inch wood subfloor
3. Subfloor framing has holes drilled into it to let the moisture flow out and not puddle
4. Glued and screwed 3/4 inch plywood and let settle for 6 months before installing tongue and groove
5. Layered felt paper between plywood and the teak tongue and groove flooring
6. Sacrificed a goat and a virgin during the full moon last night while crossing my fingers

One of the really cool things about this project was the fact that most of the supplies I used were leftover supplies from other projects, so it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg to complete a Do It Yourself home project (it seems like everything costs at least $1,000). The only supplies I purchased for this project were the sheets of treated plywood. Everything else was here as a result of overestimating supplies for other home projects.

Hardwood Floor Installation

Once the first line was snapped and I lined up the first row of boards, your path has been set and it’s time to choose the correct pieces of wood, bang the new row into the grooves of the already installed row, pop in some nails and move on to the next row. I used a 18 inch 2×10 piece of scrap wood to bang the boards into place and my trusty air compressor powered finishing nail gun to tack the boards down. The nails I used were 2 inches long and I nailed through the tongue of the board so the nails would be hidden once the next board was installed. The only two areas you can see nails are the starter boards and the end boards. Once I trim out the walls with runner boards I will putty the nail holes and it will all disappear.

Hardwood Floors Installed - Brazilian Teak Looking Real Nice!

I did the entire job by myself and it took me about 20 hours. It probably took me about 10 hours to frame out the subfloor, shim the uneven spots, cut, screw and glue the plywood and then another 10 hours to install the tongue and groove flooring. If you have experience and the right tools, I bet you could get this job done in half that amount of time.

Here are some of the pictures that I took while the project was under way. The subfloor photos are from 6 months ago and the finish work is from this week.



Wait. Not so fast. Now that downstairs is almost done, the floors still look unfinished so we decided to install tile. We have literally been looking at tile for 3 months and NOTHING has blown us away. I think we were going to do just because we thought we should, to make it look more finished. And then we rediscovered stained polished concrete. Again.

A buddy of ours (talented artist) sent us this site to check out what another DIY couple did with polished concrete at their house. They did a really good job. Check out the designs they created with masking tape on their polished concrete floors.

The stained and acid sketch polished concrete floors I have been looking at on the web look amazing. Summer is stoked on the idea of a design/tile look and I love the idea of a four pointed compass at the entrance way downstairs. I think we found our solution. Now, the new task is to strip the old glossy sealer so the concrete actually absorbes the stain.

I have read a few different ‘do it yourself’ websites and watched a few videos on how to remove the sealer, and I have narrowed our two options to non-toxic strippers; Soy and Citrus.

Citrus Concrete Seal Stripper
The citrus stripper seams much more labor intensive. It involves spray 20 cubic feet at a time, letting the stripper site with cotton drop cloths over it, then pealing up the cloth and most of the stripper with it. This needs to be repeated until all the stripper is gone.

Soy Concrete Seal Remover
The Soy concrete sealer stripper seams to be much less labor intensive (lazy gene). The Soy is applied to the floor, let sit and then gels up and can be removed with a wet-vac and hard bristled broom.

Really, the job is going to be a lot of work no matter what option we choose. Summer and I will both have to move our entire offices and clear out the entire downstairs to the gym, bathroom/laundry room and the platform in my office. Man, this DIY stuff sure is exhausting!

If anyone has any good advice, PR supply information or recommendations, we would greatly appreciate it!

We have been searching for a cool tile for downstairs for a couple weeks now, but aren’t really having any luck finding anything in our budget. We narrowed our choices down to about 6 different tiles that range from porcelain tile to slate. We are going to keep the tile 12”x12” to help reduce the cracking and tiles coming up in the future due to our floor being uneven. The basement was never designed to be apart of the house so the floor wasn’t poured level. Another thing we are going to have to do is strip the concrete polish/sealer up from the floor. From what I understand, if you pour water on concrete and it beads, the mortar you use for the tiles will never stick to the floor and you will waste a lot of time and money.

Help us choose! Which tile do you like the most?

There is a ying and a yang to ordering pre-finished tongue and groove hardwood floors. If you order too little, you’ll slow the job down by a few days at best waiting for more wood to arrive or at worst, the supplier won’t have any of the type of wood you are using left. Jamie and Brian told me when this happens, you are forced to switch the type of wood you are using halfway through the job.

We estimated at we would need 1,780 square feet to cover all of upstairs. That included an extra 10% for waste for bad cuts, bad boards, broken tongues etc. For 1,780 square feet we received 100 of these boxes (that weigh about 70lbs each).

By the time Jamie and Brian installed the floor in the two bedrooms and great room we had 39 boxes of flooring left. Wow, that is about $4,500 in extra flooring that can’t be returned!!!! So, we decided to put the hardwoods in the guest loft where Summer and I have been sleeping, on our soon to be enclosed screened in back porch and built a platform in my office for my desk and files. We still have enough wood left over to put tongue and groove above the closet in the master bedroom and above the bathroom. I’ll also be able to use it to trim out above the closets/great room.

Depending on how good I get with these tools I have here, I may even use it to build the shelves in the hallway closet and in the master closet. Heck, its good expensive wood that is going to last forever…and we have it…so we’re gonna use it.

In retrospect, we wouldn’t have spent the extra money if we had known we didn’t need to have this much hardwood flooring to finish the house, but it is allowing us to add a bunch of extras all out of beautiful teak.

Gotto go to the airport and then SURF!

As you can see, it is factory pre-finished tongue and groove hardwood floors.

After lining up how the floor is going to be installed, it is time to take wood out of the boxes and line them up so that the cracks do not overlap each other for at leas two boards. This is called ‘racking’. Once the racking is done for about 6 rows (30-60ft accross) brian cruises on in there with his pneumatic nail gun and throws in some staples. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t the kind of staples you would use to send stapled receipts to the tax guy. These staples are Bostich 2 inch by half a doo-hickey strong staples that are put in to each board with 120 pounds of air. Strong stuff….

(please excuse the mess. We’re not tweakers, I swear. You try living in a construction zone, damn it!!)

Anyhow, the slab is done. Yay!

It measures 21′ x 31′, cost about $1500 ($1000 in concrete and $500 in labor) and took about 8 hours to complete.

Tray (built our steps) and I drove out to Cabo Rojo to one of his wood suppliers and got a catalog from them…they had Ipe, Walnut, Brazilian Cherry, Teak. What a relief, we are going to be able to get our floors (I already booked the tickets for Jamie and Brian to fly down and install them) because this company seems legitimate with a big glossy catalog. BZZZZZZZZZT! Wrong Answer! I called the supplier to order our IPE and they didn’t have any type of flooring in large quantities. They could offer us a couple hundred square feet, but not what we needed.

So now, it was the mad rush again calling every one (in spanish) I could track down that may have hardwood floors. After a stressful couple of days I found a place called Ferreteria Tesero Evenista in San Jaun that stocks hard wood flooring. Their pricing was good ($6.50sq ft) and they had Ipe in stock. The day before delivery (a week before the arrival of Brian…the wood needs to sit in the house for a week to get acclimated) they called me and said they didn’t have enough Ipe. The only thing they had 1,800 square feet of was Brazilian Teak. It is still a very hard wood, it is naturally resistant to rot and termites, but it isn’t Ipe.

Lacking other options, I pulled the trigger on the Brazilian Teak. They delivered the Patagonia Brazilian Teak yesterday. One hundred boxes on a flatbed. Yesterday was a Saturday so there wasn’t anyone here working that could drop what they were doing and help so I unloaded all of it in a little under two hours. I have bruises all over my shoulders and arms from HEAVE HOEING them up onto my shoulder.

Here are some pictures after one round of sponging. It will probably take three meticulous passes with the sponge to get the grout residue off of the marble before we are able to seal it with the 511 Impregnator. It took me about 40 minutes to go tile by tile…and my back is feeling real nice. It really makes me appreciate the hard work Gino has put in to get the floor completely flat and the butt joints to line up so well.

It’s hard to see the film from this angle, but it’s there

You can see the thin film from this angle

Tray and Mark started the stair construction on Thursday and are estimating they will be done on Wednesday. Can you imagine walking down steps to get downstairs/upstairs as opposed to the steep ladder (10 ft ceilings plus 3 feet of stringers…13ft down). The dogs will be able to roam the entire house freely…they’ll be able to go out back into the fenced in portion of the yard (i won’t have to worry about letting them out) and both of them will love sleeping on the cold concrete slab floor. There are a few benefits for Summer and I too…but this isn’t about us…it’s about the dogs!

The stringers are made out of Number One 3×6 treated lumber…they will be stained black to hide the green treated wood and to create a cool contrast with the Mahogany steps. The first two pictures are the stringers getting cut out and the last picture is of the giant milled Mahogany boards (in Summers office) waiting to be cut, routed and stained.

Another example of this is the process of laying the marble walls in the Master Bath. The tile we are using on the floor is a pre-sealed and grouted travertine. It is somewhere between a 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick. It will (is) cover the entire floor and will be the 6” border around the bottom of the shower and wet room. From there, we will stack the marble on top of it and carry it up the wall to six feet. Here is the process; the marble is 3/4″ to 1″ thick…so we need to build the bottom tiles out a half an inch or so so the staggered marble tiles are flush with the border tile. Because the marble is so heavy, we need to give the travertine a day or two to dry to ensure it is structurally sound….but we came up 10 tiles short for the installation so that has come to a grinding halt. We are pretty much dead in the water in the master bath until those tiles come in…which I had to special order from San Juan.