Ok, I've got my supplies ready to do the refinishing, but I've got a question about the existing floor. Since it's face nailed to the joists with cut nails, (standard 1885-1900 flooring technique?) how do I protect the basement floor and my stuff underneath from stain/poly drips, dust, etc?

The actual floor isn't spongy or soft so I'm not really looking to reinforce it but walking noise is noticable and there are occasional 'gaps' that seem to be pretty common on floors up here in NE Philly. To protect the basement and to sound insulate the floor a bit I was thinking about 6 mil plastic stapled to each side of the joist flush with the surface (think upside down square 'U' shape) in the basement followed with a layer of fiberglas insulation.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or ideas for materials? I'm not really planning on drywalling the basement as of yet so I'm concerned about the exposed pink stuff not meeting fire/building code.

Thanks in advance, this message board is tops!


Shawn

If your basement is a living space, the ceiling needs to be sheetrocked. As far as your gap questions, forget the plastic. Get some fiberglas batts with the paper attached to one side and put the paper side toward the subfloor. Then use the sprung thin steel wire retainers to hold the batts in place till you rock the ceiling. They also make a nylon netting material for that as well. The paper will catch the drips from the stain and poly.

Gary thanks for the response. The basement is a little unusual. Half has been finished and half is unfinished. The stairs disect the space (rectangle) and to the right is a finished room where I have my drums and a few guitars, amps, etc. To the left is completely unfinished and as of now it's for laundry and storage.

I was going to reparge the rock walls where it's falling apart and paint the new walls and floor. That was about as far as I wanted to take it for now.

So excluding fiberglas insulation are there any other products out there to reduce noise that would retrofit to the floor? I might just leave it and pull/staple plastic across the joists to protect from the drips. I'll pull it down when I'm done and live with it.

: )

Thanks,

SS

COOL! I got a little "studio" myself.
I didn't realize you just needed a temporary drop cloth arrangement. Yeh, just hang the plastic till you're done with the finishing then take it down. As far as sound proofing. That's a real science! Fiberglass batts help a little and it's cheap so stuff all those joist bays with that. There probably is a type of ceiling material that can be installed over the sheerock that will also cut down on sound transmission but that's not my area of expertise.