Please help with basement floor & stairs

9 years ago

Hello everyone,

My husband and I are researching options for our finished walkout basement. Our house is 20 years old and has never had water in the basement (no pump either). The house was well graded so that's great. However, I'm weary of putting down laminate because of possible humidity issues etc. Tile would be an options but it's more labor and expense than we are hoping for. So we have had our eye on laminate vinyl plank. The room honestly doesn't get used all that much. It's about 800 sq ft of finished space (including a small bathroom that's already tiled). My husband's office is down there as well as a family room where the cats sleep at night (and during gatherings upstairs). Their litter boxes are also in the unfinished half of the basement. Our kids also use the outside door to get to the bathroom since it's the one at ground level. Therefore, this space gets hard usage infrequently. One other draw is the huge and heavy pool table in the middle of the room. Right now we have Berber carpet that has had bleach spilled on it (husband working outside sloshed in his bucket through the whole room), various spills, cat hair, rips and pulls from the cats scratching on it, etc. I want a hard surface to eliminate most of these issues. Plus, my husband has allergies and the carpet doesn't help.

The main floor of our home is mostly oak floors (the orange colored one....which I want to stain darker at some point once the kids stop doing things to scratch it) with some gray slate like tiles in the kitchen and mud room. I'd like to do a teak color or maybe something a little darker in the basement (the oak color looks more fake to me...especially in contrast to the real thing). My problem is how to address the stairs. The stairs to the basement are carpeted (gross and dirty) right now. How do I tie in the vinyl floors to the stairs? Do they have options for that? If not, should I just put the hardwood oak treads down (I know that's more expensive)? That way they will match the more expensive upstairs floor? Then that's going to jar the eye at the bottom.

FInally, how do we floor with the pool table there? Do we jack it up? My husband is going to do the install. He successfully installed an engineered wood floor in our condo (which we hated but looked good) years ago and he's pretty handy. We just aren't that familiar with these areas?

Thanks so much for any help. I am grateful to anyone who bothered to read this whole thing. :)

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Comments (3)

PRO
Cancork Floor Inc.
9 years ago
OK...start with the stairs. The stairs - if visible from the upstairs living space - belongs to the upstairs living space. If there is a door at the top that prevents anyone from seeing them then they can either an "upstairs" floor or a "down stairs floor".

I'll assume they are visible from the main living space. The stair treads will be finished in oak (match the species to what you have now) and then finished to match (as best as possible) to what you have NOW. Very simple.

As for the downstairs flooring, the pool table is going to be your biggest issue. And here's why. They can be SOOOOO heavy that they ANCHOR a floating floor in place = problems down the road.

That means glue down/permanent flooring (like carpet or tiles/stone/concrete) is the way to go. Except you are looking at vinyl....sigh.

Now...vinyl in a floating presentation is easy to get right. All you need to do is use a vapour barrier that comes in sheets (Home Depot), tape the seams and you are ready to go. Except the pool table could be too much for it. Oops.

Now we have to move to a glue down vinyl - uh oh. Now we have to deal with moisture testing (yep....the INSTALLER has to KNOW how to test, with which instrument and know what s/he is looking at/for). Once the testing has been done - with proper tools (which are quite expensive BTW) - the proper ADHESIVE is chosen. Hold on. We're only half way there.

Now that the moisture levels have been tested and the proper adhesive has been chosen (this stuff is EXPENSIVE...can be as much as $3/sf), the proper TOOLS have to be used. The right trowel with the right notch. Excellent. Now the tool has to be used properly to achieve the correct spread rate for the moisture levels found.

Now you are ready to install a permanent floor down stairs. Whew! That's a lot of knowledge.

The pool table is your biggest issue. Without it, the whole thing would be a breeze because you can float any floor you want with only minimal knowledge/tools. As soon as you get into "adhesives" and their use, you are getting into some very serious technical territory in a basement.

And vinyl has another drawback - it rarely allows underlay/underpadding. That means the vinyl will probably sit directly on concrete = almost as cold/hard as concrete. This can be pretty harsh depending on what climate you live in.
nikcib
Original Author
9 years ago
Thank you for your thoughtful response. Honestly I'd get rid of the pool table which came with the house and was partially destroyed by kids/cats but my husband likes it (for the 3x a year he uses it). I honestly think the basement is bone dry. I just thought the waterproof part would be good for the kids coming in from outside (especially if we ever get a pool or something). I have to admit you made my head spin. Husband really does not want to do tile floor. I only want tile if it looked like wood because it seems more homey to me. I'm definitely NOT doing carpet again. So it seems I'm stuck. Ugh why can't anything be easy?
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nikcib
Original Author
9 years ago
Also I just want to add that my basement is NEVER humid feeling. I've always thought that strange. It feels like the rest of the house even in the middle of soupy august heat. It never had that basement smell even in the part that is deeper underground.