On The Level

Though I still need to do another (final, I pray) coat of mud on all the drywall in the third bedroom, we decided to turn our attention elsewhere this weekend-- specifically downward, to the floor.  You see, the concrete slab upon which the bedroom is sitting is not exactly level.  It's not even kind of level, and that's going to be a problem for the engineered hardwood install we're planning to do in a couple of weeks.  

It's high on the north side of the room (nearest the door) and about 1.5" lower in the center of the south (window) wall.  The corners of the window wall are only about 3/4" lower than the high side.  So... that's a mess.  After doing some research on the best ways to address the issue, we invested in six (!!!) bags of self-leveling concrete at $30 (!!!!) per bag.  I read the reviews online and was pretty intimidated by the project, and it turned out to be every bit as challenging as I expected.  

When we pulled up the carpet and the pressboard tile beneath it, big chunks of the previous owner's attempt to level the floor came up too.  They'd just poured concrete on top of the un-level slab, but it wasn't really attached to the slab, just sort of floating on top.  So we knew we'd have to start over before putting in our flooring.

We started by chipping up the few shreds of old concrete that were actually bonded to the slab.  Then we primed the floor with the recommended product and waited for it to cure.  We rented a corded drill (pro tip: cordless drills aren't powerful enough to handle mixing concrete) and a mixing paddle for $18 and readied our supplies: 6.5 quarts of water per bag, pre-measured so it would be easy to mix the next bag while spreading the previous one. 

Then we started pouring.  And after we poured five of our six bags, we realized we needed to stop and correct course.  See, there are several places where the concrete slab and the concrete footings for the walls don't really meet.  I thought those were just little divots that would quickly fill in with wet concrete.  But they aren't.  They're actual holes.  Lots of the very expensive concrete just flowed right out of them.  And the more I tried to fix it, the bigger mess I made.  So here's what we're working with right now:

We've made a lot of progress towards making the floor level, and those ripples you see on the wall in the back are actually just splash marks-- it's not as bad as this photo makes it look.  But in one hour I'll be able to head into the bedroom (it needs four hours to cure before you walk on it) to caulk up the gaps on the far side of the room (there's one in each corner under the window) so we can pour the last bag tomorrow and hopefully be done with this step.

In other exciting news, my new sofa is supposed to arrive within the next hour and a half.  I'm skeptical.  I mean, it was technically supposed to arrive by the middle of August.  We'll see.