We hired an Irishman named Kevin to take up the old messed up slab with his excavator, put down stone, and pack the floor. When deciding who to hire, there were a couple of guys named Kevin who were in the running and part of my conversation with Catherine included the following:
Cat: "Why do you want to hire this new Kevin over that other Kevin?" Me: "This Kevin is not a crackhead." The other Kevin had reputedly cut off his wife's arm in a drug-induced skirmish involving a samurai sword. That story came from the same guy who had recommended him. He also smelled. The choice wasn't hard. The Kevin we did hire ended up being superb. He came over with another Irishman named Cormack and it was grand.
Patrick McDonald, a local architect and developer - a friend of a friend, was in between projects, and helped us out by designing a radiant heat system to lay in the concrete. These are his guys putting in Pex tubing. Warm water will flow through these tubes and heat up the concrete floor. It's like walking on a giant radiator. It's also quiet heat which is perfect for a recording studio.
We marked where the walls will go in the studio and put in these foam pieces so that when we pour the concrete, there will be separations between the rooms - which is ideal for killing sound vibrations from one room to another. Start at the bottom - all rooms on independent slabs. This was fun. Our architectural drawings were somehow a few feet off and it was messing things up, so we sort of scrapped it and spray painted the lines for the walls at night before the concrete went in. That felt liberating and I think we ended up with a great design that responds well to the space. A little spray foam to close all possible gaps because I got a bit obsessed with the separate slab thing.
Irish Kevin and his Home Depot Day Laborers -- is that a good name for a band?
And after a little polish and setting... We have a nice new concrete floor.
You're supposed to keep it wet for 30 days
A whole mess of radiant pex tubes coming out in a future closet to deal with later. Pressure gage is good, meaning we didn't poke a hole in any of the tubes. So it's good to go. That wasn't too bad at all... It's the boiler that's the expensive part... It's almost summer now, and we might wait until we absolutely need it next winter.
