The basement is officially ready to be primed and painted!
We had a guy working last week to mud and tape the drywall. We are so happy with the way it turned out, and with the guy we hired. We nixed the guy we had originally hired, and went with the other one that had given us a quote back in December. The original guy had already pushed our project back a month and it was looking like it would be another two weeks before he felt like starting. So we said goodbye to him and hello to someone else. So happy we did.
[You can clearly see where we’ve started cleaning up the dust on the floor.]
We’ve started scoping out carpet for the basement as well. We talked to someone at our neighborhood Home Depot who was super helpful with explaining to us what to look for and consider when buying carpet. By the end of it all, we had actually picked out a carpet by Martha Stewart that we both really liked. The color is “Cityscape” and it’s from the Sandringham line of carpet. It’s the low, but soft carpet we were looking for. Plus it has a slight pattern to it. The guy at Home Depot told us that out of all of the carpet they carry, the Martha Stewart brand was going to be the best carpet to have since we own two pets. It uses nylon fibers so it’s super durable, includes a 20 year wear and texture retention warranty, and it has a lifetime stain protection. Sold!
However…we hit a huge road block. We’re not sure if the tile that’s currently in the basement contains asbestos. If the tile does, Home Depot is not allowed to install the carpet. We can still purchase the carpet from them, but would just have to find someone else to install it. Because we decided at the very beginning that the basement would get carpet, we said that we weren’t even going to try to remove the old tile—one of the main reasons being the possibility of asbestos. If it’s left alone and “unharmed,” it’s fine. It’s once you start breaking it up that you have to professionals and haz-mat stuff involved. So for now, we’re going to keep the Home Depot option in mind, but also look else where as well. After we get the prime and paint done, we’ll have to install the doorframes and the floorboards before we get carpet. We were told that the average carpet process of ordering and installing can take about three weeks, so I’m hoping to get carpet order and do the door frames and baseboards while we wait.
—m.