DIY level 2: cement

By | 2007-08-30

You know when you’ve passed to a new level on do-it-yourself… it’s when you feel able to manage cement.
You also know when you start becoming mad… it’s when you feel able to manage cement.

Bathroom floor step 1Last weekend I committed the biggest DIY project I have ever done. For some weird reason we had parquet floor in the bathroom. The house doesn’t have parquet anywhere but the bathroom, where you have just the moisture necessary to destroy the wood. I have been living 2’5 years here, and last week, suddenly, I decided that the wood was in a really bad state, so I ripped it up. Underneath I found the old floor.

I started looking for options to improving the floor aspect. One was installing a new PVC floor, a sort of plastic material, supposedly easy to install. The problem was that everybody suggest its use over a flat surface. And unluckily the topography of the old floor was a collection of hills and holes. So the option was using some kind of auto-levelling paste. The next day I went to a hardware store, bought the PVC floor, but there was a problem with the famous paste… they only had 25Kg bags. So I chose not to choose this, and instead I picked a 2Kg cement bag. It was written some instructions in the bag, so I thought it was going to be easy. Moreover, I bought a new tap.

Bathroom floor step 2After installing the new tap, I started to make the cement. And soon I realized I needed also sand! Where can I get some sand, a Saturday evening? I took some bags, and went to Montjuïc (the nearest hill). Luckily I stumbled with some street works not far from home, so I took the opportunity to steal some sand. I came back home, and made a cement layer. I was really tired, however I went to have dinner in an Indian restaurant (the best in Barcelona, according my flatmate’s guitarist’s former band) with Jordi. The next day I added another layer.

Bathroom floor step 3Finally, I installed the new floor. It was a bit annoying to cut the WC shape, and to discover that there wasn’t right angles anywhere. I used a special glue, really sticky! And at the middle of the installation, I ran out of glue. Hence, I had to wait until next day, Monday, to buy more. Eventually I bought it, and finish it. There was a minor problem… there were some places with too much glue, creating waves while you step on. So I’m cleaning the glue excess…

Conclusion: The result is quite nice, but if I have in the future some similar idea, please kill me!!