I had a bunch of vacation to use up before the end of year, so I decided to spend it getting the flooring installed in the basement. My Pop came down for about 4 days and we hammered though it.
First, we put about 90 sq feet of tile in the laundry room. As can be expected we had to cut a lot of tile (along all but one wall). My Dad was a sport manning the wet saw all day while I did all the knee work setting the tiles. Very happy with the finished product – probably a little too nice for a lower level laundry room, but why not.
Then it was on to the wood flooring covering the majority of the basement. I had picked out a type of flooring that has the ease of installation of laminate, but all the perks of real hardwood. The choice was Vanguard by Tarkett. Their tongue and groove planks consist of hardwood plies (like plywood) with a quality, prefinished ply on top. The planks tap (actually pound) together without the mess of glue and float on top a layer of foam underlayment. Meanwhile the crossed plies reduce expansion effects. Just like a traditional hardwoord strip floor, the planks can be sanded and refinished if ever needed in the future (not that I ever will!).
I choose a light shade (natural maple) to keep things modern and bring a bright, airy feel into the basement. It’s actually a real poor choice of flooring for a theater room, but I let design drive this decision. The challenges are that the smooth, hard floor accentuates reverberation and the light color causes more ambient reflection on the screen. I felt these weren’t super big problems since the sound can be improved with other furnishings and the picture quality can be optimized with the screen surface and projector settings.
Here’s a look with the underlayment down:
And here’s the finished result:
It took about 2 full days to lay the roughly 370 sq ft of wood, but man, are we happy with the results!
Tags: Basement
