Floor Issue... (Concrete)

akthomp

I recently tore out carpet in my downstairs apartment of our house. It is a split level house so the bottom floor is ground level. I needed to tear out the carpet because the dogs have taken their toll on it, and since I breed dogs, having puppies on a regular basis is just too complicated to have carpet. When I pulled out the carpet, we found concrete flooring on the bottom. This really was not the issue... The issue was the concrete areas where it looks like they used to have walls. Every place a wall used to be has raised concrete. (Perhaps lumpy is a better way to say it.) I had planned on putting down laminate flooring, but I am at a standstill until I can figure out how to fix this problem. The area is too big to do self leveling concrete over the top, as this is an alternate method we came up with. It was mentioned to me today that there is a way to "sand" concrete. Is this possible? I really need to find a solution soon...

Any suggestions for me...?

Bud Cline

So what are you saying?

The "bad spots" are high?

Grind them off. You can rent a floor grinder for a few hours and fix it.

akthomp

So you can grind the concrete?!?! What a relief!!! Any suggestions on the best place to rent a floor grinder? I am new to this whole "do it yourself" thing and will probably need to sweet talk a guy into helping me... LOL Perhaps it will be something easy enough for me to do on my own! :-)

Termite

Most tool rental centers (Home Depot, etc) can set you up with the grinder you need.

RippySkippy

If you choose to grind the concrete...make certain that you wear the correct dust filter as concrete dust is not good on your lungs.

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ccarlisle

Hammer and chisel...

Bud Cline

How about a photo of the offending concrete? Before this thread goes nuts like some of the others have.

akthomp

I will see about getting some pictures later on tonight when I get home from work (around 7pm PST). There is another area of the floor that I will need an opinion about but I will not bring it up until I can get pictures. More to come later this evening...

yes.itsconcrete

the orange apron store has, for rent, a sawtec 7" grinder INCLUDING a dust shroud which'll hook up to wet/dry vac,,, good shroud makes that work virtually dustless - i don't even wear my dustfoe when using a shroud,,, IF you don't already have a vac, now's a good time to own 1 then again, there's NEVER a BAD time to buy tools, is there ? ? ?

the blue apron store may also have the same unit,,, blastrak wouldn't be our tool of choice NOR would a dble-head'd grinder of the edco type.

don't forget knee pads & safety glasses + ear muffs.

akthomp

Okay, this is the first time I have attached a file so hopefully it will work... These are a couple pics of the floor.

Bud Cline

Hard to see the variance at that camera angle but I can tell you what you have there is nothing. Go buy a "rub-brick" and rub it down a little. That's you cheapest way out. You'll be fine.

Thanks for the photos.

akthomp

The pics make it look better than it is, as it was hard to get it to where you can actually see how lumpy it is... I think the "rub brick" would be too time consuming, as one of them completely goes across the whole floor.

Either way, it sounds like it is somewhat of an easy fix. I will probably try the floor grinder first as that might be the quickest way to see results.

I appreciate all the help!!!

Bud Cline

If that is old tile I see there I wouldn't be grinding too aggressively on the tile. Likely contains asbestos.

yes.itsconcrete

we do this stuff for a living, guys i do own rub bricks but they're only for overlays,,, grinder ( 4" / 7" ), diamond turbo cup wheel, dust shroud, & wet/dry vac,,, depending on the sf of mastic, might as well get that too since the rental's a min time.

Maintenance 6

If the old vinyl tile has any asbestos in it, you don't want to be grinding on it at all. Be aware that some tile mastics have asbestos in them as well.