Get a snack and a soda people, it's a long one...

Well, I promised last night to post a longer entry today, and I'm a woman of my word! As I've mentioned before, the objective of the weekend was to level the basement floor. Thanks to homeimprovementninja, 1922 Colonial ,and Frederick Brick Works we had some good advice as to how to proceed. We had originally planned to use self-leveling floor cement, but we had too big of a drop off (1.25") and it's $30/bag, as opposed to Sakrete, which is $4/bag. So, we picked up a gallon of Leplex (latex concrete bonder), and 16- 80lb bags of Sakrete. The guy at Frederick Brick Works suggested that we use the angle grinder to cut a line in the concrete to the point that we're trying to level, so that we could push the concrete to that, instead of trying to feather it out,which was pretty much guaranteed not to work. By the time we picked up everything and dropped it off, including the rented concrete mixer, it was pretty late in the day, and Aaron had broken his glasses, so we spent the rest of the evening dealing with that and watching football with friends. Sunday morning, we were up bright and early and ready to get started. We cut the line in the concrete, and chiseled it out at an angle to give us more room to get the concrete in. Then we removed the toilet and vanity from the bathroom so that we could take care of that area as well, which first required removing the linoleum. Unfortunately, the toilet had been leaking (which we did not know) for a long time, and there was a lovely mildew or mold layer underneath the linoleum. I also don't know what they put this linoleum down with, but it didn't want to come off. We hit it with the heat gun, water, etc. all to no result. Finally, we got the plastic upper layer off, then soaked the papery bottom layer with a strong bleach solution and were able to scrape it off with floor scrapers. Nasty! Then, we were finally ready to get started with the concrete. By this point, it was pretty late, so we painted Leplex on half the floor and called it a day. We had Monday off, so we got up early and started mixing and pouring the concrete. We poured almost all of the bags, painted the rest of the Leplex and then we had a blood donation appointment at the Red Cross, so we took a break for that and for lunch, then came back and mixed and poured the rest of the concrete we had plus the other 6 bags that we had bought! This is why I was so tired last night. Tonight, we poured another 8 bags of concrete. We estimate that tomorrow night will require 8 more bags, and then we should finally be finished with a nice level floor and a rough, ready for tile surface.
And, for the pictures...

The line that we so carefully made in the concrete, and didn't actually use-



The nasty linoleum floor that was so difficult to remove-



Leplex action shot. This stuff is smelly and the consistency of Elmer's Glue



Aaron's a trooper! 1 pint down and he's still mixing cement!



Aaron smoothing the last area of the concrete that we did on Monday. I should have taken more before shots, but the floor sloped obviously to the left side of the picture.



Brooming the area by the door... this will hopefully give the thinset for the tile more area to stick to



Tonight, we decided to move the mixer (I like to call him Mixmaster Mike) down to the basement so that we could speed up the whole process, and also not freeze to death. This was a great idea, and made the whole process go much more quickly and easily, since we could just dump the concrete on the floor, instead of into two buckets, which we then had to carry downstairs. We will definitely finish this way. Here's Aaron finishing up the area that we did tonight. I promise that I do work, I just also take pictures!



Stay tuned for tomorrow night, when hopefully I can report that we're finished!