Unfinished Cellar floor solutions?

We have a pretty dry unfinished cellar with decent ceiling height and would like to cover the floor with something to make it less dusty – right now, it’s somewhat uneven concrete with patches of dirt. We have all our storage along the sides on raised shelves but each time we go down there we track some of the dirt back upstairs. Down the road, we may consider doing a true finished cellar but for now, we want a more economical solution. We were thinking of inexpensive astroturf but wonder if there are other solutions – suggestions welcome!

realestate

in Cellar 12 years and 9 months ago

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Iamthewalrus | 12 years and 9 months ago

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indoor/outdoor carpet from Home Depot. It can handle moisture, it’s easy on the feet and you can vacuum it. It keeps down the dust and it’s perfectly nice looking, easy to install (all you need is a razor knife) and inexpensive.

bluerose | 12 years and 9 months ago

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Just type in garage floor coverings and you will find all sorts of beautiful floor coverings. or you may just want to try this one that I looked at.  They have some really cool gigantic floormats that you can just unroll and cut to size. Seems like an easy fix for the meantime but you would have to consider the price. I did not look into that. Maybe you can find used ones or clearanced ones. I don’t know. Just an Idea. http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Garage+Floor+Mats&view=detail&id=E38D6F7EC108D672624D65B999600F387F1C67DB

brokelin | 12 years and 9 months ago

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Some people like putting in tinted concrete – which would solve your dirt problem and still be cellar-friendly flooring, but it sounds like you are looking for something really economical, something to just lay down over it. Assuming you don’t want to put in anything like carpet tiles, because of possible issues with water, dampness and mold, and assuming you don’t want to go through the expense now of evening out the concrete that is there now, it sounds like you need something impervious to water, that is somewhat flexible so it won’t crack when you walk on it on the uneven parts, and yet somewhat stiff to even out the unevenness of the current floor.  You might want to use some sort of underlayment – much as we do for carpeting – to even out the floor under whatever you use so it seems relatively flat.  So I’d first look into what sort of economical underlayment exists.  Then I’d look into flooring – what comes to mind to me is strips of rubber flooring, or some sort of rubber squares that interlock, as they sell for many applications.  That might be your best bet for fairly economical flooring that is flexible enough to go over your uneven patches (with or without some underlayment material, cleanable, impervious (hopefully – check it out) to water and mold, and yet will give you a nice flooring surface to walk on, while masking the uneven parts enough that you don’t trip over the bumps in the floor.  It would likely be easier to keep clean than astroturf. Though once you spec out the cost of it, you might want to check out the cost of pouring new tinted concrete over it – you would want to move all of your stuff to do the whole floor, as you would keep this as a base at least for when you renovate the cellar.  Be sure you won’t want to dig the floor deeper for more ceiling height for your ultimate renovation before you do this.  As to just laying down rubber or something else, you can just leave your raised storage and lay it in the middle for now.  Check out the rubber rolls they sell for people to use as flooring in their garages as well – I haven’t seen them in person, so I don’t know if they would be thick enough to even out your uneven floor without cracking, but they look nice.