Flooring over concrete and Other Stuff...Please Help!

[Saloon]

Hello,
I need some advice from some more experienced slutz!

My cousin and I will be opening a studio in the fall, and we've been working hard to get it ready. Before I go any further, I will give a brief lowdown of our space (I will post pics later this evening or tomorrow). Originally it was some sort of industrial bakery...but, luckily for us, the previous owner used it as a recording studio. Inside the place he built "rooms within rooms" and they are completely isolated from each other...very quiet. Unfortunately for us though, he used it as a foley studio, and probably didn't have many clients in there...it is a little bit of a "fixer-upper".

We need to do the following: Get it sounding good, and looking good. The entire place has concrete floors which we want to do something with, for acoustic and aesthetic reasons. Ideally we want hardwood floors, but what is the process for installing over concrete? I should mention the concrete is old, dirty (we've been scrubbing hard), and has some uneven spots (Can we level it out?).

The walls should be much easier, as I imagine paint and acoustic panels will help immensely. But it's the damn ugly floor....

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and if you need clarification on anything, I'll be around! (BTW I'm on a budget, so I won't be able to knock down the building and build a new one ).

TIA!!

Matt

[Berolzheimer]

Ahh, Foley, it's a dirty business. I love doing it but could never take it on full time as my lungs couldn't handle the dust.
There is something called self- levelling cement that you might pour to even out the existing floor. Other than that I'm afraid I don't know that much about building floors particularly....Although I'd think that a 2x4 grid frame over the concrete, probably doesn't need to be anchored, insulation in the air spaces to broaden their Q, 3/4 plywood sub floor on that and then whatever finish material you want on top of that, would be pretty decent. I hear bamboo is nice looking & inexpensive.
If you are recording drums in there & like Led Zeppelin you might want to explore letting the floor have a little resonance. Actually what I described probably would have a little, you'd have to go to some greater lengths I'm sure to get a totally dead floor, or adhere the subfloor or finished floor directly to the concrete somehow.

[analog orange]

Congratz on the new place, converting it is half the fun!

Bamboo Bamboo Bamboo. 3$ a square foot for a beautiful hardwood (NOT laminate). I've installed it over a wood subfloor and I've installed it directly onto concrete. Here's the lowdown.

It's incredibly resilient. I've left a plank outside in the rain and sun for the last two years and it still looks good! It comes in different varieties, the narrow 1/8" strips and 1/4" strips. The 1/8" inch stuff looks very exotic and it doesn't show itself to be bamboo. The 1/4" stuff shows the bamboo "knuckles" a bit more. I think the 1/8" stuff looks cooler. It also comes in two basic colors, natural and dark/medium brown. It's not stained brown, it's smoked and that changes the color. Both look really incredible, however I did my studio in the natural and my house in the brown and i noticed that several of the brown pieces, about 20% were bowed. I think this happens during the smoking process as the pieces are already laminated together and the heat probably distorts them a bit. You usually plan for 10-15% of wood flooring to be screwy, the brown bamboo was around 20% in this case. The natural stuff had maybe around 3-5% bad pieces. Anyways...

Installing on a wood subfloor is a piece of cake, just set, nail and move on.

Installing it directly on concrete is trickier and more expensive.

If you want to glue down the flooring, read the following. (Let me save you the trouble, glueing sucks, skip to the following paragraph)

First you should do a moisture test on the concrete. Go to each corner of your space and tape down a 1 or 2 foot square piece of plastic. Let it sit 3 or more days and then check underneath for condensation or moisture. If it's all dry, all you need to do is clean the floor. An acid mopping will do the most good. Then get a straight edge and start looking for dips. Mark their centers with a sharpie and then get some levelling cement. It's basically really thin cement. After it dries sand everything out. I think you can have like a half inch variation in the floor level for every 2 feet. Don't quote me on that, you shoud probably check that out. You'll need to get a special glue designed to allow the floor to adhere but also to move. It's really great stuff, however, it's going to cost you about a $1 per square foot. They say that you can do as much 3 square feet per dollar. BS. For bamboo, you've got to apply it with a 1/4" trowel.

See, I told you glueing sucks... Here's what you want to do. Get whatever wood subflooring that the product requires. I think you'lll need 1/2" ply. Cut to size and thenfix it to the floor with liquid nails or something. Walk all over it. Make sure it doesn't squeak. No you've got a would subfloor to apply the bamboo. This is what I SHOULD have done in my house. It would have gone in probably twice as fast as glueing. You've got to wait 4 hours before you can walk on the glued sections and glue's just freakin' messy.

Here's a great place to get it.

http://www.ifloor.com/powersearch.pl...Nu=rollup%5Fid

I bought from iFloor this exact brand, and it's been great. I have no affiliation with either the bamboo company or iFloor, I just really dig their product. The other cool thing is that they really know alot about flooring. When I had some questions about my flooring that they couldn't answer, they put me in direct contact with the President of Bamboo Garden Flooring! She walked me a bunch of stuff. Really good people. Anyways, if there's any questions I can answer, just let me know.

Sorry for the rediculously long post. No clients today...

[keyboardman]

I would like to co-sign on everything analog orange just said. I put a bamboo floor (from iFloor...I used the 3' Vertical Natural Medium) directly onto concrete in my place. Never again! Too much start and stop because of high and low spots. Sanding the high spots (and low spots after you fill with Quickrete) put all sorts of concrete dust in the air that you have to make sure you get off of walls, windows, etc. Its a PITA.

It _DOES_ look great though. Put in the subfloor, you'll be happy that you did!

[Berolzheimer]

Hey, thanks for that info AO, I'm about to add to my house & we'll probably go with bamboo & cork floors.

[nukmusic]

man, just look at the contruction of the many studios here
http://www.johnlsayers.com/Studio/index.htm

you will get a very good idea of what might be good for you and your cash flow.

[kats]

I've seen floors made with 4x8 sheets of plywood (nice side up of course) and then a finish applied to it. Looks kinda cool. I've seen the same done with chip board. It's about 1/3 the cost of hardwood.

[joeq]

I would go with the grid idea. A floating frame would level out any rough spots in the cement (if they are really bad, you could shim them), you can stuff insulation into the frame. Build it so that it just misses the walls, then caulk it, and it will give you an extra level of isolation for each room.

My brother and I did a whole living room floor in an afternoon with the tongue and groove flooring boards, and we had never done it before. All you need is a miter saw and one of those angled nailers and you can bang it out really fast.

Don't forget to run some cables through the floor before you close it up.

[matt thomas]

get a laser level to see if the floor is straight, not that expensive and it does a great job.

Also, if you want thermal insulation (does the floor feel cold?) you can get that silver under wood flooring stuff.

and I repeat the above "lay cables first" although if you want them removable think about that.

Another option is just painting the concrete and using wooden risers for drums or whatever, and rugs for whatever.

narco

[Drumsound]

Wes Lachot seems to do a lot of 'tinted concrete' floors. I assume this means actually adding pigment to the concrete, but it could be paint. You could then move rugs around and change the room easily and drastically.

[Saloon]

Thanks for all the replies! It's all great advice. I'm leaning towards bamboo flooring as it looks great and seems to be harder than most others. It's also a renewable resource ....

I still haven't decided if I'm going to pour more concrete and sand down the high spots or just build a "floating" subfloor...I'm leaning towards the pouring/sanding...I'll let you guys know!

Thanks again!

[jajjguy]

A positive to using a floating subfloor is that whatever squishy stuff you float it on (some kind of foamy rubbery stuff) will help acoustically isolate the floor and cut down on structure-borne sound travel through the floor from one room to the next. (And if you have downstairs neighbors, they'll appreciate it too.)