W’ere going to be working in a 1.2 million dollar house (which isn’t the castle you’d expect, at least around here). A couple of questions –
How do people cover softwood floors while doing onsite renovations
What kind of room air cleaners does everyone recommend for remodels?
How about a sheet good – masonite, etc? We will be doing a few interior remodels and want a sytem we can reuse.
Replies
Jim
I recently did a reno on my house, first I put down some poly then I went to my local friendly cabinet guy. His expensive veneered plywood ships with 1/8" hardboard to protect it. Lay that over the ply and it should work well. Perhaps though if you are possibly going to be alittle hard on your work surface you may want to but your 1/2" sheathing for your next house early and use that instead.
Gary Tomlinson
Edge-2-edge Design
I do this all the time.
Once we rebuilt the whole house around the floor practically, took out one wall, inserted steel beam above and below, rebuilt it with new windows, jacked up the ceiling where it had a five inch sag, and torsioned it to the ridge, added trims, and painted again.
The caretaker was getting nervous about the wood floors when we weren't done yet a week before the owner was due. Two days before arrival we took up the floor protection and found the floors in better, cleaner condition than the rest of the house which experienced a winter's worth of normal dust settling.
Here's what I do:
Use red rosin paper rolled smooth and taped in place oiver the whole floor.
Plastic is slippery and dangerous but if I anticipate water intrusion or plasterers making major mess I put it down next.
Then I cover the whole floor with plain Homasote. It's easy to cut into place and it stays there. It's comforable to walk and work on and a small spill will be absorbed. Drop a heavy tool and the Homasote laughs it off.
Put down a drop cloth or cardboard under your work station where most sawdust and chips will fall to make it easier to haul out. Some will settle between the sheets of Homasote but a shop vac run occasionally will get most of them out.
come cleanup day - Just carry the sheets out to the truck and on to the next job or the shop. Pull the plastic up towards the center of the room so you are bagging the fine sawdust. Then when it is out of the house, You can have one guy rolling the rosin paper back up while another is running a vacumn.
For about 250 bucks you can get a room dust air cleaner that works great from any of the woodworkers suppliers. Basically they are all just a fan to move air past a series of filters. I'm sure somebody, Tools of the Trade, Wood Magazine, American Woodworker or somebody has recently doen a comparison test on them but there isn't too much difference in them. I suppose my biggest requirement if I were comparing features would be noise level and ease of changing filters.
I don't know where they come from, but several times I've seen these big interlocking tiles, like the kind they'd use in a kids' playroom, over the floors..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Another trick I've used is when you are tearing out carpet as part of the job, it can go down upside down ovewr the rosin paper for padding and protection
Excellence is its own reward!
Jim,
Homosote is the answer. Seal off the floor with red rosin paper, run the Homosote anywhere regular traffic will occur and in rooms being demo`ed. Cover areas only occasionally worked around with drop cloths as necessary.
I`ve looked into the interlocking tiles, they are rather expensive. I plan on buying small amounts at a time as I continue from job to job.
Perhaps consideration should be given to incorporating this practice into every renovation. My house didn`t cost $1.2 mil, but I`d apreciate the same attention to dust management as those who own the "castles".
J. D. Reynolds
Home Improvements
"DO IT RIGHT, DO IT ONCE"
Edited 4/25/2002 8:17:33 PM ET by JAYBIRD
I'm not familar with the term homosote, is it the same as masonite or hard board?
Time for ol' Mark to demonstrate his ignorance here....
What is "homosote" ? I've never heard of it. couldn't find it in any dictionary etc.
I've always done the rosin paper trick and then put down 1/8" masonite. If you tape the seams, you have a virtually impenetrable barrior that will hold a spill long enough for you to get the rags and clean up whatever you've spilled.
Homosote is (or at least looks like) compressed newspaper, and comes in 1/2" x 4' x 8' sheets. Sometimes confused with sound board, which looks (and smells) like compressed hay.
I like to lay down two layers of red rosin paper if it's going to be there a while, with overlapped seams and blue-taped edges. Cover with 1/8" masonite and duct tape the seams. Theoretically the masonite could be reused from job to job, but it's always so gunked up we just throw it away.
Generally for a fairly long term projects more often than not we lay paper
then cover it with 1/4" masonite and then duct tape all the seams.
We don't like using poly because it lays down a vapor barrier albeit a temporary
one and doesn't allow any wood or mortar beds underneath to dry and season naturally
and climatize with the rest of the house.
We also don't use rosin paper per se anymore either. Instead we use a product
called FortiFiber Seekure paper. On one multi million dollar job we installed
a stair on I saw the white limestone main floor stained pink from the pigments
released from the rosin paper as the mortar bed cured and dried releasing it's
moisture up in to the rosin paper. A big costly whoops I would say. After that
incident they covered the floor in FortiFiber Seekure paper and I took note
of it.
The Forti-fiber Company says "Seekure
is a non-staining, liquid resistant paper for protecting carpeting, tile, terrazzo,
marble, wood and resilient flooring surfaces. It protects against grease, oil,
paint, dirt, plaster and traffic from construction trades on new flooring surfaces.
Seekure is inexpensive, easy to apply, and is available in various sizes and
constructions to meet a variety of applications." Since that incident
I would never under any circumstances use rosin paper at all. A water spill
or leak could easily stain a wood floor as well as a limestone one.
It cost more than rosin paper but still cheap and is extremely tough and under
some conditions actually reusable. It has nylon fibers or something like that
running through it so it doesn't tear (you cut it with a knife) and it wider
than rosin paper too. I now swear by the stuff.
I've used homosote on occasion instead of masonite but the taped seams don't
last as long but it's a good option too and is pleasant on your feet and helps
absorb job site noise a little too.
The big interlocking foam tiles that Phill has mentioned are pretty neat too.
I have enough of them to cover a good sized bathroom but they're expensive enough
that you would be hesitant to cut them to make a closer snugger fit in the room
you were trying to protect and any heavy tools stationed on them like a table
saw would eventually dig in to them a makes moving a tool like that a definite
two person job where a single person could drag move a table saw on a masonite
floor. Also with the foam you have a tougher time figuring a measurement from
the finished floor since the foam thickness varies some what as they get used
and dented. With masonite you just figure for a 1/4" plus a sheet of Seekure
paper (maybe 1/32"). They also leak dust and grime though the joints. What
I like to use them for is to protect your knees when you have to kneel to work
on a length of baseboard or toe kick. You just link a string of them together.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go
instead where there is no path and
leave a trail."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
check the ads in FHb and JLC for a company called "Protect" something or other. I've used their fabric runners......kind of a thin carpet over a rubber backing. # ft wide.....comes in rolls. Works great for foot traffic areas. They vacumn up great.....cut to size....lay thru whole house.....number...and they'll last a 9 month remodel and go to the next job.
Homosote for the drop areas. I have tarp runners that get the daily use. Canvas tarps everywhere. Jeff "That's like hypnotizing chickens........."
Jeff,
If you like the "Protect" product you mentioned, I highly recomend the liquid protecter they make also. I use it for bathroom installations.(porcelin tubs, shower basins, sinks, etc.) I have one of my laborers paint it on thick, two or three coats before fixtures are installed. After the job is complete, peel it off to reveal the absolutely perfect finish it had when delivered. I don`t have to worry about a sub doing damage when I`m not watching over their shoulder. Give it a look see, if you haven`t already. J. D. Reynolds
Home Improvements
"DO IT RIGHT, DO IT ONCE"
Homasote as well. Except I use kraft (brown) paper instead of red rosin paper. Someone told me a nasty story about red rosin staining, so I changed to kraft.
We use kraft paper with blue taped edges and seams. Then we lay 1/4" luan plywood over the entire floor duct tape the seams on it. It is easy to move tools on, the luan can be reused, and if you drop a tool it won't hurt the floor.TCW Specialists in Custom Remodeling.
one dude I know just uses plain cardboard boxes laid flat and taped together.
We usually do the rosin paper , with protection board on top of that if there's construction, sometimes, when finishing a job, we just do the rosin paper
When we have to protect a floor, we run blue painters tape around the perimeter, then put down red rosin paper taped together and taped to the blue tape with masking tape. On top of that goes 1/8" tempered masonite taped together with duct tape. The blue tape gets a good fit but doesn't stick forever and doesn't damage the floor finish. If you're working there for a long time it should be taken up and redone esp after demo - dust does get through at edges but not much. We don' t use plastic - I had a water problem one time - if any water does get in (spilled coffe or whatever) it stays and reeks havoc and you don't find out until too late. Rosen paper seems to soak and it up and evaporate out. If you're repainting the trim you can tape to the baseboard.
jim slim - Click here for Protective Products Dura Runner and other products - we specify them all the time.
T. Jeffery Clarke
Guys.....It's HOMASOTE.....with an "A"!
It's made from recycled newspaper, the greyish color is from the ink.
http://www.homasote.com
This stuff has been around for a while.......Admiral Byrd even took it to the South Pole.......how's that for some obscure information you didn't need to know!
Maybe i'm being ridiculously cheap but the Homasote is 26. per sheet and didn't look anything special. My local yard is pushing a product called "Ram board" which looks like thick heavy cardboard and didn't seem like it could take much abuse. I'm going to start out with soundboard with kraft paper above it. Does anyone think this is foolhardy? The soundboard was soft, good for absorbing the dropped 2x4 and good for working on and cheap, 6 bucks a sheet. It does get damaged fast but seemed fine under the kraft paper.
Let me know if it just a bad idea. Thanks for all the imput.
Well as was mentioned in an earlier post tonight ;I am from Arkansas!!!!!!! I'm still laughing about that. I use blandex , Tape with duct tape ,reuse the blandex for a variety of different uses. But Im pretty cheap also. I just cannot see throwing the sound board money away. I also cant store the masonite just for that use.
Tim Mooney
We use a white poly foam product from Prosupplynet.com. http://www.prosupplynet.com/. We left it down 5 months on the wood floors in a 3 MM apartment and there was no damage from the construction activity.
It is expensive, but is re-useable and we covered and entire apratment (4400 sf) with 2 guys in 1/2 day. The labor saving over a sheet good (masonite or homasote) is more than enough to make up the difference, plus the result is better protection.
JKASTENHOLZ I checked out the URL you posted (thanks, it likes a great resource) and browsed their site and downloaded their catalog but I couldn't find the "white poly foam product" you mentioned. Maybe I overlooked it or just missed it. Do you recall where on the site you found it or what it was called?
Thought it was interesting on the project I am on this week we are cutting outside so as not to create a mess inside even though we have it well protected in their but at the end of each day we sweep and then vacuum the driveway anywhere where it wasn’t protected by drop cloths too.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go
instead where there is no path and
leave a trail."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We call it " the white stuff". I think they call it wood floor protector. A large roll is about $200.
Sorry for the mis-communication.