Basement floor update

I shared some basement updates recently, including a plumbing project to fix our bathroom sink drainage and some rearranging and functional updates to improve my workshop. I also shared this photo of the space right at the bottom of the basement stairs:

Which is definitely a big change from how it had been looking:

Indeed, I laid a new floor and painted the walls!

I want to start with a HUGE disclaimer: this is not a tutorial for laying a new floor. I am not claiming to have done this well enough for anyone to copy. Also, I don’t plan to get into a conversation about our old basement floor, which is almost certainly asbestos. The tiles are intact (though there are some missing sections), and encapsulating asbestos with a new floor on top is safe and typically a better approach than removal. That said, you should always get a professional opinion on your own situation.

The new tiles I picked out are adhesive VCT tiles from Lowes, which are very durable and quite affordable.

Our basement is very dry, but we do occasionally get spills from our washer. More importantly, we drag furniture and other heavy things around frequently, and I didn’t want anything that was going to get easily damaged.

VCT tiles do need to lay on a totally even surface, though, so my first step was to level a few low spots. I started by applying a primer to the spots where I was leveling, and then I used a self leveling underlayment to fill low spots (the primer helps the underlayment actually stick):

(I didn’t get any process shots because I had no idea what I was doing and had my hands full.)

Next, I applied VCT adhesive. The adhesive needs to be spread across the full floor and allowed to cure, which means it needs to get clear and tacky before you can start laying down tiles. Here you can see it after I first applied it (there is adhesive on the concrete portion, it just started drying and getting clear faster):

And here it is getting clearer as it dries:

It took a few hours to get to that point where it felt ready for the tile to go down. Mostly I occupied myself by trying to keep the cats out of the basement in the meantime.

Then I just started working my way across the room, laying tile and cutting as needed to work around the closet, furnace, etc.

It was pretty easy to lay and cut, though I definitely discovered quickly that unevenness in the floor is super noticeable — the final result isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough for me.

Also you may recall that the walls were a sickly yellow color with a giant unpainted section where I think the old oil tank used to be (removed before we bought the house), so I decided to do a coat of white paint just to lighten it up a bit. You’ve already seen the finished result, but here it is again since every post has to end with an “after” photo:

(You can still see the yellow walls to the far left — I only did this corner!)

It’s still a basement, but I think it looks a lot better especially since there are no longer big holes in the concrete sections of the floor (it was especially bad around the furnace). I didn’t take any before photos of that because apparently I forgot how to do this whole blogging thing, but just take my word for it….

That’s just one quarter of the basement and eventually I’d like to do the whole thing, but I’m procrastinating because the prospect of having to clear out the furniture in the rest of the basement (including heavy gym equipment, my giant workbench, and our washer, dryer, and extra fridge) is way daunting. So…the project remains about 25% done for now!