DRIcore
Friday the DRIcore was supposed to be delivered, so I was working from home all day (something that I don't really enjoy since I like the people in the office). By 3:30 I was getting worried that it wasn't coming so I called Home Depot to see when it might be here. After being transferred around, they finally said that the manager would call me back. By 4:30, when I still hadn't heard from them, I called again and got the same run around. When I tried to call back at 5:30, as expected, there was no one to talk to.
I gave up on getting the delivery that day and at about 6:15 left with Sara to get dinner and go to the kickball season-end party.
When I got home, at about midnight, I was greeted by two pallets of DRIcore sitting in front of the garage. This was nice, since I wasn't expecting them to deliver it, but also not so nice since it meant I had to move a ton (literally, 2260 pounds) of DRIcore into the garage instead letting the guy with the forklift do it.
It took about half an hour to move all of the 240 tiles into the front of the garage, and I still had enough room to park the car in the garage. Nice. I only dropped a few tiles, with a loud bang, and the neighbors didn't seem to notice. Very nice.
Sunday I decided that I wanted to start laying the DRIcore. The first thing I would need is shims. The DRIcore is supposed to be 1/4" away from the drywall. Since most of the basement doesn't have drywall, that means 3/4" away from the studs. Luckily for me, the trim boards from around the doors in the room I removed from the basement were 3/4" thick. I spent 15 minutes pulling the finish nails from them and had ready made shims. I also spent about half an hour removing the screws from some of the 2x4s that were used in those walls in case I needed to rip some of those down to use as shims.
I put down an initial row of 12 tiles just to see how the shims were working and how the panels fit together. They fit easily enough, though it's hard to get them square to each other since tapping with a hammer tends to make them jump. I think that might be because the shims are too tall and aren't sitting perfectly flat against the base of the walls, so I'll have to cut the shims down to see if that helps. I also figure that as I get more panels down, the likelihood of the panels shifting will be greatly reduced. The boards go down quite quickly since there is no gluing or nailing, though my floor requires constant cleaning since it's a bit of a demolition mess. That's the part that's really slowing me down.
Confident that things will work out, I decided that it was time to bring all of the tiles into the basement so that they can adjust to the temperature and humidity (it's like 30 degrees in the garage and 65 in the basement). That took about 50 minutes and was quite the work out. I would bring down 6 or 7 tiles at a time (each tile weighs over 9 pounds) and flip them over onto their plastic bottoms (on the pallets they were upside down, but they suggest that you put them on their feet when letting them acclimate). That started to tear up sides of my arms as I attempted to rotate the 6" thick stack with rough edges and by the end of the process I was bruised from accidentally kicking the pile with my bare foot, arms were rubbed raw in some spots, hands had a splinter or two, and my back was killing me, but all the tiles were in the basement. I put them in the far corner so there shouldn't be too many to move when I have to tile the location they're currently occupying.
I'm excited to get them down and see if they really do warm the basement the "6 to 7 degrees" that I've been promised. At any rate, they'll make whatever carpet I put down feel way better than it would if it was sitting on concrete, and I think that's worth the 7/8 of an inch I lose to headroom. Updates to follow.
I gave up on getting the delivery that day and at about 6:15 left with Sara to get dinner and go to the kickball season-end party.
When I got home, at about midnight, I was greeted by two pallets of DRIcore sitting in front of the garage. This was nice, since I wasn't expecting them to deliver it, but also not so nice since it meant I had to move a ton (literally, 2260 pounds) of DRIcore into the garage instead letting the guy with the forklift do it.
It took about half an hour to move all of the 240 tiles into the front of the garage, and I still had enough room to park the car in the garage. Nice. I only dropped a few tiles, with a loud bang, and the neighbors didn't seem to notice. Very nice.
Sunday I decided that I wanted to start laying the DRIcore. The first thing I would need is shims. The DRIcore is supposed to be 1/4" away from the drywall. Since most of the basement doesn't have drywall, that means 3/4" away from the studs. Luckily for me, the trim boards from around the doors in the room I removed from the basement were 3/4" thick. I spent 15 minutes pulling the finish nails from them and had ready made shims. I also spent about half an hour removing the screws from some of the 2x4s that were used in those walls in case I needed to rip some of those down to use as shims.
I put down an initial row of 12 tiles just to see how the shims were working and how the panels fit together. They fit easily enough, though it's hard to get them square to each other since tapping with a hammer tends to make them jump. I think that might be because the shims are too tall and aren't sitting perfectly flat against the base of the walls, so I'll have to cut the shims down to see if that helps. I also figure that as I get more panels down, the likelihood of the panels shifting will be greatly reduced. The boards go down quite quickly since there is no gluing or nailing, though my floor requires constant cleaning since it's a bit of a demolition mess. That's the part that's really slowing me down.
Confident that things will work out, I decided that it was time to bring all of the tiles into the basement so that they can adjust to the temperature and humidity (it's like 30 degrees in the garage and 65 in the basement). That took about 50 minutes and was quite the work out. I would bring down 6 or 7 tiles at a time (each tile weighs over 9 pounds) and flip them over onto their plastic bottoms (on the pallets they were upside down, but they suggest that you put them on their feet when letting them acclimate). That started to tear up sides of my arms as I attempted to rotate the 6" thick stack with rough edges and by the end of the process I was bruised from accidentally kicking the pile with my bare foot, arms were rubbed raw in some spots, hands had a splinter or two, and my back was killing me, but all the tiles were in the basement. I put them in the far corner so there shouldn't be too many to move when I have to tile the location they're currently occupying.
I'm excited to get them down and see if they really do warm the basement the "6 to 7 degrees" that I've been promised. At any rate, they'll make whatever carpet I put down feel way better than it would if it was sitting on concrete, and I think that's worth the 7/8 of an inch I lose to headroom. Updates to follow.
posted by Mark at 8:18 AM
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