The new basement floor was poured almost three years ago, by asshat builder. I posted earlier about being promised a 7′ basement, but receiving something less – more like 6’8″. Since my son is 6’4″ and possibly still growing, every inch down there counts, as it is supposed to be a play area for him.
Drywall/taping/mudding was finished last week and it’s ready to be painted and finished. And this week, since I’m on vacation, I went down there to do that. That is when I noticed that the floor is nowhere close to level. I don’t know why I never noticed before, or maybe I noticed but did not understand the consequence, because I’m not an effing builder. I’m only trying to pick up the pieces and staunch the copious flow of cash out my door by doing some work myself. Live and learn baby (I’m listening to Nina Simone as I write).
When I think back to when it was being poured, I recall seeing one of the asshat’s assistants levelling it with a 2×4, which I have seen being done on TV. Since there are dips in the floor greater than two inches, I can only surmise that the massive dips were installed on purpose.
Like, I can’t understand how something other than a reasonably level floor could have been installed.
In any event, after years of being shocked and dismayed by the work of the asshat builder and his asshat associates, I understood that there was nothing to be done except to fix it, since no sub-floor would sit on it properly. So, I undertook to use a self-levelling cement . I’ve never done this before and have zero experience with working with cement, but I’ve seen it on TV. Not unexpectedly, like it was for Goldilocks, it’s been a bit of a disaster for me.
The good news is that my son helped me and I never once had to pick up or carry any of the bags and bags of 50lb cement.
Other good news is that I figured out that you can’t believe what you read on a label. The label on the cement said to use about 5L of water per 50lb bag, and that for my roughly 150 square feet I would need four bags of the stuff.
But after mixing four bags with roughly 20L of water, I was left with a substance that wouldn’t really pour/self-level (it required pushing around with the handy squeegee I bought) and only covered one corner of the space.
So, we had to let that dry and went back to the hardware store to buy four more bags. This time I Googled reviews of this product and added more water as was recommended by some users. Unfortunately, too much, and it probably won’t set properly. But it still didn’t cover the entire floor.
So, copy and paste, we had to let that dry (as much as it will) and went back to the hardware store to buy four more bags. Like I said, the good news is that I had my son to carry the cement. I’m an old lady now and my hands and wrists don’t like 50lb bags of dead weight. And he liked learning how *not* to pour cement.
And, four days later, I’ve decided we’re close enough, and once we have concrete, I will wipe up the water soup left over and we will shim the heck out of the subfloor and proceed as if everything is “just right.”
