Troy has been continuing to deliver the TLC to his 1960s Eichler home in the San Francisco Bay area. Recently, he had all the carpet and vinyl tile removed, then had the concrete underneath sanded and polished. Gold star: He had all layers tested first and indeed, needed to engage licensed professional asbestos abatement. As preparation for the polished concrete floors, he also had a new, radiant-flooring system installed. Concrete is an ideal heat-sink for radiant heating and for passive solar heating, too. Cozy on the toesies. Read on for Troy’s story. As usual, he has been amazingly generous with 12 more photos, too.
Hi Pam! Good to hear from you. How are things with you these days? Blog keeping you busy? Working on any house projects of your own? [No, Troy, not unless you count moving stuff to get at other stuff as a “house project”.]
Last year was a fairly busy year at Casa Troy. At the start of the summer I decided to tackle my floors – more work than I thought!
I started with demo-ing the raised floor and some interior walls that were built in the garage, opening up the space to its original construction. [Pam says: Snooze, no pics of that, let’s look at glamor shots of the new, finished floor until Troy gets to that part.]
I then had the old forced air furnace and water heater removed and a new radiant heat boiler installed, a dual-purpose unit that heats water for the floor heat as well as for domestic hot water. It’s a nifty piece of engineering. All the original copper pipes in the slab and the manifold controls were intact, although two leaks were discovered that had to be fixed. The guy I hired to do the boiler work and repair the leaks was excellent.
I then had all the tile and carpet removed throughout the entire house. The tile and mastic was asbestos so had to get the abatement people in to do the removal.
I decided to have the concrete cleaned, sanded, and finished so I now have concrete floors throughout the entire house which get nice and toasty warm when the heat is on – love it!
I’m not 100% happy with the concrete finish materials I chose and the job the concrete finish guys did – with hindsight I wish I’d looked into a few other finishes before choosing the materials we used (an acrylic sealant topped with a coat of matte wax.
The sealant brought out more of the brown tone of the concrete than I was expecting, and even with the matte wax the surface is still shinier than I’d wanted. Oh well, live and learn).
It was quite an ordeal, emptying the entire house of all furnishings! The garage was floor-to-ceiling stuffed, and a bunch of furniture, appliances, mattresses, and garbage bags of clothing were outside under plastic, which kinda sucked when it rained a week before the floors were finished.
I’m still working on some new bargello pillows, will share photos when I get them finished.And I’m currently thinking about making some curtains – lots of them, actually, if I want to cover all the windows. I’ve been waffling about window treatments for over two years now, and decided I need something soft on the windows to contrast the house’s angularity and hard surfaces. I’m looking into how to sew pinch pleats, maybe a single or double “pinch” per pleat, rather than the common triple pinch. I get lots of sunlight throughout the day, so indoor/outdoor fade-resistant fabric seems to make the most sense (they won’t need to be lined – bonus! – and the color/pattern of the fabric will show from the outside as well, since I have so many views back into the house from the courtyards). There are lots of colors/patterns/textures/weights of indoor/outdoor fabric available so I’m sending away for some samples – not sure yet what I’ll choose. Since the windows go all the way to the ceiling I also need to figure out a hanging mechanism that attaches to the ceiling, have yet to find something that I think will work. And I need to buy a sewing machine – do you sew? Any advice would be appreciated. Once I figure out how to make the curtains, I think it will go fairly smoothly – famous last words! More later. -T
More inspiration from Troy: