New CA Flooring - The good, the bad, and the ugly

Many of you already following the other post by @edenblue about the flooring in CA already know that we spent the weekend working on it. I’m making a formal post here explaining the situation, where we are, and what needs to be done.

The Good

Items accomplished:

  • All of the flooring was purchased and brought to DMS.
  • All of the carpet was ripped out of the new room and the carpet baseboards were ripped out.
  • All of the many, many disgusting layers of carpet glue were scraped up.
  • Most holes in the drywall were spackled or drywall taped and spackled as necessary.
  • The areas where ripping out the carpet baseboards exposed the cardboard part of the drywall were treated with Killz.
  • All of the walls were painted and will only need a few touch-ups before we lay the new flooring.

The Bad

Items left to accomplish:

  • Fix the unlevel areas of the flooring
  • Clean walls where the flooring mess splashed and touch up last bits of paint.
  • Lay flooring and threshold.

The Ugly

Unfortunately when we ripped up the carpet we found that there were a few areas of poorly patched concrete. Our best guess is that the foundation needed levelling at some point and they patched it then, but they didn’t do it properly and thus it didn’t adhere to the foundation properly.

After conversations with @mrjimmy and @yashsedai if we don’t have a member who is well versed in this type of fix we will need to bid out to contractors and pay to have it done properly.

I made the decision to halt work after all of the glue was up because I’d rather not have our new flooring down (even in the ancillary rooms) while concrete work is being done.

Thank yous

Our volunteers this week kicked some serious ■■■. In no particular order I’d like to thank @ladysandry, Barrett, @GTHolkan and @sinless, @sewwhat, @mreynolds and his son Jake, @jrkriehn, @yashsedai, @dougemes (along with Jen and his sons Trey and Connor), @edenblue and her husband Kevin, @Josh_Melnick, another @JoshW , @MellissaRhodes and @AlexRhodes, @lordrook, Jeff, Annette, Shelly, Daniel, Nicole, Kenneth, Ayden, Susan, @Webdevel and Tracy, Johnny, Katie, two other guys there yesterday afternoon whose names I didn’t catch, and @JRay who helped us extensively with advice about the unlevel flooring. Thank you to @CaryF300 for the loan of his miter saw, which unfortunately we didn’t get to use and to anyone else who loaned tools that I don’t know about. Please chime in if I’ve missed you or if you are one of the mystery people whose names I didn’t catch.

Thank you all so very much. It was a lot of very rough, very gross and dirty, very un-fun work and we seriously appreciate you.

Many edits to add names of people I forgot.

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@JoshW (Josh Wims) was the other Josh. He is vice-chair of Laser, but all-around hard working and knowledgeable guy.

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Edited! Thanks, I was like “how don’t I know his last name???”

If the problem was caused by improper proper packing after a foundation correction, can we talk to the landlord about some type of reimbursement far the cost of repairs? It would seem that the improper repair was done on their watch.

Y’all were kicking butt in there. Impressive results thus far

This is what happens when you start remodeling a 30 year old building that was built as a warehouse. There will always be surprises. It was the choice of Creative Arts to pull up the old carpeting. Please let the Board of Directors handle any issues with the landlord.

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It’s likely an old single entry, that was corrected when new tenants or code needed different access.

I can definitely say that the self leveling thin set was not properly placed. If I was then there would not have been carpet adhesive still on the original concrete. There is no way the landlord would pay for it. I can tell you this as all the remodels I’ve been involved in, it’s pretty common for contractors to just omit a step or two if nobody is watching.

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You are welcome!

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Our lease gave us the building “as is”.

Expansion could ask. But given that the landord was unwilling to give us Any.Consideration.Whatsoever for fixing the floor in the West workshop (Flex area) due to the actions of the prior tenant, I’m going to speculate they will be less than amenable to fix the relatively small areas in the new CA studio.

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Jeff! Yes! Now that I’m lucid I’ll probably remember your name! :sweat_smile:

@lordrook the two people that got their rfid implants Sunday, two gentleman that were there when we arrived yesterday and were scraping the sewing room. There were so many volunteers and so much going on so if we missed you here please know we do remember every single face.

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How did I miss Steve??? I’ve added him in!

@GTHolkan and I helped for a couple hours on Sunday

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I think that by that point I was past remembering names. Thank you!

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I was mostly just curious about it. Y’all have to understand I’ve lived in the same house my entire life so Lisa’s and used buildings are not really something I have much knowledge of.

Cause I’m a slacker :stuck_out_tongue:
I regret not being able to do more, my hands were just dead. The resulting pics look great considering what it looked like Saturday morning.

Also Kevin is @omturbo

I saw @Nate hard at work as well.

We should had a sign in book. I really wish we could thank every single person and not sound like we are leaving anyone out.