#146- Pump up the Jam

Quick reminder- one of the key selling points for us on this house was the ability to turn the lower level bedroom into a Workout Room.  While it sat as an embarassing storage dump for our first 6 months, we recently cleared the room, painted the walls, and removed all the trim and carpeting.  

So it was on to #146 on The List- Replacing the Flooring.  The carpet had to go because it had an unbeatable animal urine smell, but instead of putting new carpet back in, we decided to use something that would fit more with the room's use.

We found this foam flooring at wesellmats.com*, and even though it might not be the best choice for future home buyers, it's perfect for how we want to use this room right now.  We figured that in the future if we ever go to sell (Lord help us...) that we could just replace this one room with carpeting and stage it as a bedroom. 

The one thing that was important to us is that this flooring fit the room perfectly, to make it look like it fit the space.  We started by laying a pattern the length and width of the room so that we could figure out the best plan to arrange the tiles and not leave any too skinny scraps on one side or another. 

Unlike actual tiles though, this flooring was super easy just to snap in.  After a bunch of research, we found you can lay them directly on top of your concrete subfloor.

The tiles came with 2 straight edges per tile to cover up the zipper grooves on any straight edge sides.  The only tricky part was cutting around the groves for the corners, door jams and floor vents.  Hubs declared that this part was my job, while he plopped in the full tiles.  Why do I always draw the short straw?

 Here I am showing off my ingenious method (ifIdosaysomyself...) of first cutting a piece of paper to fit the corner exactly, and then tracing the paper onto the tile.  This works when laying real tile as well, and can save dozens of frustrating wet saw cuts.

Like a glove...

And here she blows once we had all the tiles in.  Although it was the end of the night, and I didn't even bother to pick up the scraps and cardboard for you all.  Sorry about that.

And yes, I do realize that the Hubs painted the trim white, but not the actual door.  His point was that this was a really nice, solid wood door, and someday we would regret it, as we could always replace the trim, but not the door.  I would argue that by the time we ever want this trim to be wood again, this 30 year old door will be even older and less energy efficient than it is now, and we'll want to replace it anyway.  Anyone care to take a side?  You all have been fantastic at moderating our DIY disputes.  If this wood door is bugging you as much as it is me (I'm getting a nervous tick), please weigh in to help my cause.  Or if you side with the Hubs, I guess you can feel free to say that too. 

P.S.- *Wesellmats.com in no way asked us to post about them, in fact they probably don't know we exist.  I just wanted to share that they are a good, cheap resource for this type of flooring.