Today's post will divert from the thread to answer a question about " how to install a pocket door."
If the pocket door is going to be installed into an existing opening where there is already a swinging door or a framed or drywalled opening we will have to widen the opening to accommodate the pocket door.
There is a pre-fab pocket door frame that you could pickup at Rona or Home Depot, I know Rona always have them in stock.They come in sizes from 24 in wide to 36 ins wide. The rough opening you will need for a 30 in wide door will be 61-1/2 ins wide by 84 ins high. The rule of the thumb is what ever the door size you will be installing the rough opening will be twice the width plus 1-1/2 ins and 84 is high.
We will first deal with installing a pocket door where there is an existing door opening in a non-load bearing partition wall. By non-load bearing I mean that the partition wall is not supporting any load such as another wall or supporting floor joists. To determine this you will have to look at the top plate of the wall you want to install the door and if it has 2 plates at the top instead of one plate you will most likely be dealing with a load bearing wall. You could also poke around at the top of the wall to see if there are any joists that is resting on the wall for support.
If the wall is non-load bearing proceed to remove the door from its hinges, to do this close the door and using a flat head screwdriver and a hammer, place the screwdriver under the head of the hinge pin and proceed to hit the pin in an upward direction to dislodge the pin. Start with the bottom hinge and then proceed to the top hinge.When both pins are removed open the door gently to remove it from the opening.
Next remove the door casing and door jamb with a hammer and a pry bar, making sure you have safety glasses to protect your eyes.You will have to possibly remove the existing baseboard from the wall where you are going to install the door. We will be using a 30 in door for reference. Take your measuring tape and measure over 61-1/2 ins from the existing rough opening stud and mark the drywall.Take your level and draw a plumb line on the drywall 84 ins high from the floor. Next mark a line 84 ins high on the drywall on the existing rough opening stud side. Connect these two lines, check for level and adjust if necessary, then proceed to cut the drywall out from the opening , you should end up with an opening of 61-1/2 ins wide by 84 ins high. Proceed to cut the dry wall from the other side of the wall.There should now be some studs exposed , take a reciprocating saw cut the studs out, also, cut out the exposed existing bottom plate. If there is a cavity between the drywall take one of the studs that was cut out and place it between the drywall and screw it in place with drywall screws.
Following the directions that comes with the pocket door, finish assembling the frame and install it in place making sure its plumb and level. Fasten it to the rough opening studs.Remove the braces, remove the screws that came installed in the top track one at a time and replace them with a 2 ins wood screw. Follow the directions that came with the pocket door frame to install the door and the jamb on the latch side of the frame, making sure every thing is plumb.
Install the drywall over the frame using 1 in drywall screws, using any longer screws will protrude through the frame and could damage the door as it retracts into the cavity.
Install the door casing and lock set and you are ready to use your pocket door. I find that using the cylinder type lock set rather than the square ones looks better.
Hope that this helped. If you have any questions reach me at 416-885-3987 or info@fbscto.com
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Looking at the basement concrete floor.
Very Happy Saturday to all,
We have looked at finding a contractor and examining the foundation walls, today we will take a closer look at the basement concrete floor.
Again if you live in Toronto and you live in an older house your concrete floor was poured a little different from a new home in the GTA or a newer one in Toronto. The concrete floor was only a couple of inches thick and it was poured directly over the dirt floor. Today a concrete floor is a minimum of 3 inches thick and is poured over 4 inches of 3/4 in clear gravel that is spread out over the dirt basement floor to allow for drainage. With a concrete floor poured directly over the dirt you will always have the moisture from the dirt wanting to saturate the concrete floor. If you have an old concrete floor you will also have some deteriorating of the concrete and it will become very porous and there will be more capillary action happening in those locations. The older concrete floors usually have a lot of undulating areas which makes it difficult for installing laminate flooring. Sometimes there might be hydrostatic pressure that will cause the concrete floor to rise and crack which further complicates the installation of a finished flooring.
There are a few options that we have and depending on your budget you could choose the one that is right for you.
Option 1. Remove the entire existing concrete floor, excavate a further 4 ins of dirt, spread 4 ins of 3/4 in clear gravel and then pour 3 ins of concrete over the gravel to have a new concrete floor. With today's prices it could run you around $15.00 per sq. ft. for a project of this magnitude.
Option 2. Execute the same process as Option 1 but before you pour the concrete slab, you could add 2 ins of blue Styrofoam over the gravel then pour the concrete. This means you will have to remove an extra 2 ins of dirt when removing the concrete floor and existing dirt.
Option 3. Break up and remove the high areas of the concrete floor then remove the areas where the concrete has deteriorated. The broken up areas could now be fill with a premixed concrete stone mix by just adding water. To level the lower areas if it is quite large you could use a sand and cement mix with a concrete adhesive. First spread the concrete adhesive directly to the concrete floor and let it set until it is tacky to the touch. If the floor is very smooth it is best to make a few chip marks on the surface of the concrete to allow better adhesion of the new surfacing concrete. Next mix a slurry mixture with the cement and concrete adhesive and brush that on over the concrete adhesive. Mix the concrete and sand together with the concrete adhesive and water and level the areas of the floor that are lower to achieve a level floor.
This is a very inexpensive method of levelling a large area of concrete floor. Toady's cost will be approximately $3.00 a sq. ft.
For smaller areas you could use a premixed floor leveller, such as SikaTop 122 or 123 Plus which is a polymer-modified, plus migrating corrosion inhibitor, cementitious, two-component fast setting mortar. It could be spread as thin as 3mm. ( 1/8 in ) and as thick as 38 mm. ( 1/2 in thick.)
There is also a Mappie floor leveller that works very well. If you use these products for large areas you will have to increase you budget for levelling the floor.
After levelling the concrete floor and you want to make sure that you won't have moisture damaging your newly installed flooring you could add a sub floor. There is a Dry Core sub flooring that comes in 2 ft x 2 ft interlocking squares that has a Delta membrane attached to the underside. This is an effective and inexpensive way install a sub floor. If you have a contractor do the work of supplying and installing the sub floor it could cost you around $4.00 a sq. ft.
Hope that this Blog have been helpful. If you have any questions feel free to contact me at 416-885-3987.
Next time we will chat about underpinning the basement or lowering the basement floor.
Jerome Sammy
416-885-3987
http://www.fbscto.com/
info@fbscto.com
We have looked at finding a contractor and examining the foundation walls, today we will take a closer look at the basement concrete floor.
Again if you live in Toronto and you live in an older house your concrete floor was poured a little different from a new home in the GTA or a newer one in Toronto. The concrete floor was only a couple of inches thick and it was poured directly over the dirt floor. Today a concrete floor is a minimum of 3 inches thick and is poured over 4 inches of 3/4 in clear gravel that is spread out over the dirt basement floor to allow for drainage. With a concrete floor poured directly over the dirt you will always have the moisture from the dirt wanting to saturate the concrete floor. If you have an old concrete floor you will also have some deteriorating of the concrete and it will become very porous and there will be more capillary action happening in those locations. The older concrete floors usually have a lot of undulating areas which makes it difficult for installing laminate flooring. Sometimes there might be hydrostatic pressure that will cause the concrete floor to rise and crack which further complicates the installation of a finished flooring.
There are a few options that we have and depending on your budget you could choose the one that is right for you.
Option 1. Remove the entire existing concrete floor, excavate a further 4 ins of dirt, spread 4 ins of 3/4 in clear gravel and then pour 3 ins of concrete over the gravel to have a new concrete floor. With today's prices it could run you around $15.00 per sq. ft. for a project of this magnitude.
Option 2. Execute the same process as Option 1 but before you pour the concrete slab, you could add 2 ins of blue Styrofoam over the gravel then pour the concrete. This means you will have to remove an extra 2 ins of dirt when removing the concrete floor and existing dirt.
Option 3. Break up and remove the high areas of the concrete floor then remove the areas where the concrete has deteriorated. The broken up areas could now be fill with a premixed concrete stone mix by just adding water. To level the lower areas if it is quite large you could use a sand and cement mix with a concrete adhesive. First spread the concrete adhesive directly to the concrete floor and let it set until it is tacky to the touch. If the floor is very smooth it is best to make a few chip marks on the surface of the concrete to allow better adhesion of the new surfacing concrete. Next mix a slurry mixture with the cement and concrete adhesive and brush that on over the concrete adhesive. Mix the concrete and sand together with the concrete adhesive and water and level the areas of the floor that are lower to achieve a level floor.
This is a very inexpensive method of levelling a large area of concrete floor. Toady's cost will be approximately $3.00 a sq. ft.
For smaller areas you could use a premixed floor leveller, such as SikaTop 122 or 123 Plus which is a polymer-modified, plus migrating corrosion inhibitor, cementitious, two-component fast setting mortar. It could be spread as thin as 3mm. ( 1/8 in ) and as thick as 38 mm. ( 1/2 in thick.)
There is also a Mappie floor leveller that works very well. If you use these products for large areas you will have to increase you budget for levelling the floor.
After levelling the concrete floor and you want to make sure that you won't have moisture damaging your newly installed flooring you could add a sub floor. There is a Dry Core sub flooring that comes in 2 ft x 2 ft interlocking squares that has a Delta membrane attached to the underside. This is an effective and inexpensive way install a sub floor. If you have a contractor do the work of supplying and installing the sub floor it could cost you around $4.00 a sq. ft.
Hope that this Blog have been helpful. If you have any questions feel free to contact me at 416-885-3987.
Next time we will chat about underpinning the basement or lowering the basement floor.
Jerome Sammy
416-885-3987
http://www.fbscto.com/
info@fbscto.com
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Looking at the foundation.
Good day to all,
Today we will talk about the foundation of your basement. If you live in an older home in the Toronto area, you would most likely have a foundation of field stone, concrete blocks or a more recent one of poured concrete. Before you finish your basement you should check around to see if there are any leaks or signs of leakage.With field stone foundation walls the mortar would have disintegrated and turned to dust by now and you would probably have some seepage or out right running water. If the leaks are minor ones and the field stone just gets damp then you might be able to do a fix from inside. First you could pressure wash the joints between the stones or use a wire brush or a pointing tool to remove the loose mortar. Then using a pointing bag you could fill the mortar joints with fresh mortar and squeeze it into the joints and pack it in with the pointing tool. After you fill all the open joints you could mix some parging cement or mix portland cement with sand and use a concrete adhesive and water to mix the cement together and apply it to the foundation wall from the bottom up to the top with at least a 1/4 of an inch thick cement and trowel it smooth. After the parging has dried there are several concrete sealing products on the market that you could apply with a roller or a cement brush that would seal the wall and prevent any water from penetrating the inside of the wall. One product we use which does a superb job is called Drylok and you could purchase it at Rona.You apply the first coat then wait about 3 hours and then apply a second coat, if needed a third coat could be applied. You could use this same procedure for an untreated concrete block wall.
With a concrete block wall if there is a crack, you could chip the crack in a V groove approximately 3/4 in deep and fill the groove with a fast drying hydraulic cement. You could apply the Drylok directly to the unfinished block wall.
If you have a poured concrete wall with a crack you would have to use a 2 part epoxy to seal the crack.
What we use is a Sika product. First you would use the Sika Anchorfix to adhere the ports over the crack with intervals of approximately 6 ins apart, then fill the exposed crack between the ports with the same Anchorfix adhesive. When the Anchorfix adhesive has hardened you could now fill the ports starting from the bottom port first with the 2 part epoxy Sika Crack Fix Super low Viscosity Resin. As you fill the bottom port the Epoxy will fill the crack all the way to the exterior of the foundation wall and will rise to the port that is immediately above it. When you see the epoxy flowing from the above port withdraw the Crack fix applicator and cap the bottom port.Continue the same process of all subsequent port till you reach the top port. Do not skip any ports but always proceed from the bottom port upward to the next port directly above. Let it set for 24 hours and check for leaks. If there is a lot of rain you could monitor the crack for leaks. If there is no rain fall you could run a garden hose around the area of the crack from the outside of the foundation wall and check for leaks.
The other method for fixing leaky basements would be to excavate the dirt around the exterior of the basement walls, search for cracks, fill the cracks as you would the interior, parge the walls, replace the weeping tiles if needed, apply a bitumen to the parged walls, then apply a Delta wrap membrane from the weeping tiles up to just above grade, caulk the top of the membrane and then back fill the cavity.
If you have any questions you could contact Jerome Sammy at 416-885-3987 or visit our Website at www.fbscto.com. Hope that this article has been helpful.
Next we will deal with the basement concrete floor.
Jerome Sammy
416-558-3987
www.fbscto.com
info@fbscto.com
Today we will talk about the foundation of your basement. If you live in an older home in the Toronto area, you would most likely have a foundation of field stone, concrete blocks or a more recent one of poured concrete. Before you finish your basement you should check around to see if there are any leaks or signs of leakage.With field stone foundation walls the mortar would have disintegrated and turned to dust by now and you would probably have some seepage or out right running water. If the leaks are minor ones and the field stone just gets damp then you might be able to do a fix from inside. First you could pressure wash the joints between the stones or use a wire brush or a pointing tool to remove the loose mortar. Then using a pointing bag you could fill the mortar joints with fresh mortar and squeeze it into the joints and pack it in with the pointing tool. After you fill all the open joints you could mix some parging cement or mix portland cement with sand and use a concrete adhesive and water to mix the cement together and apply it to the foundation wall from the bottom up to the top with at least a 1/4 of an inch thick cement and trowel it smooth. After the parging has dried there are several concrete sealing products on the market that you could apply with a roller or a cement brush that would seal the wall and prevent any water from penetrating the inside of the wall. One product we use which does a superb job is called Drylok and you could purchase it at Rona.You apply the first coat then wait about 3 hours and then apply a second coat, if needed a third coat could be applied. You could use this same procedure for an untreated concrete block wall.
With a concrete block wall if there is a crack, you could chip the crack in a V groove approximately 3/4 in deep and fill the groove with a fast drying hydraulic cement. You could apply the Drylok directly to the unfinished block wall.
If you have a poured concrete wall with a crack you would have to use a 2 part epoxy to seal the crack.
What we use is a Sika product. First you would use the Sika Anchorfix to adhere the ports over the crack with intervals of approximately 6 ins apart, then fill the exposed crack between the ports with the same Anchorfix adhesive. When the Anchorfix adhesive has hardened you could now fill the ports starting from the bottom port first with the 2 part epoxy Sika Crack Fix Super low Viscosity Resin. As you fill the bottom port the Epoxy will fill the crack all the way to the exterior of the foundation wall and will rise to the port that is immediately above it. When you see the epoxy flowing from the above port withdraw the Crack fix applicator and cap the bottom port.Continue the same process of all subsequent port till you reach the top port. Do not skip any ports but always proceed from the bottom port upward to the next port directly above. Let it set for 24 hours and check for leaks. If there is a lot of rain you could monitor the crack for leaks. If there is no rain fall you could run a garden hose around the area of the crack from the outside of the foundation wall and check for leaks.
The other method for fixing leaky basements would be to excavate the dirt around the exterior of the basement walls, search for cracks, fill the cracks as you would the interior, parge the walls, replace the weeping tiles if needed, apply a bitumen to the parged walls, then apply a Delta wrap membrane from the weeping tiles up to just above grade, caulk the top of the membrane and then back fill the cavity.
If you have any questions you could contact Jerome Sammy at 416-885-3987 or visit our Website at www.fbscto.com. Hope that this article has been helpful.
Next we will deal with the basement concrete floor.
Jerome Sammy
416-558-3987
www.fbscto.com
info@fbscto.com
Finishing your basement. Finding a contractor.
Finished Basements.
The first step in getting your basement finished, is deciding if you are going to do the work yourself (DIY) or your are going to get it done professionally.
If you are going to get the job done by a professional you will have to do some home work to come up with a good contractor. You could first ask friends or family if they know of any good contractor that could execute the type and quality of work you are looking for to get your project completed. If you did not get any references you could search the Web or Print Media. Check the yellow pages, Style at home Magazine, Flyers that come to your door and call a few contractors to give you a price on your project.
You could give us a call at 416-885-3987 or you could check our website at http://www.fbscto.com/. Some one will come out and give you an estimate on you project.
Here are some questions you could ask your contractor:
Next will be inspecting the foundation for problems and what you could do about it from inside and outside.
Jerome Sammy
416-885-3987
info@fbscto.com
http://www.fbscto.com/
The first step in getting your basement finished, is deciding if you are going to do the work yourself (DIY) or your are going to get it done professionally.
If you are going to get the job done by a professional you will have to do some home work to come up with a good contractor. You could first ask friends or family if they know of any good contractor that could execute the type and quality of work you are looking for to get your project completed. If you did not get any references you could search the Web or Print Media. Check the yellow pages, Style at home Magazine, Flyers that come to your door and call a few contractors to give you a price on your project.
You could give us a call at 416-885-3987 or you could check our website at http://www.fbscto.com/. Some one will come out and give you an estimate on you project.
Here are some questions you could ask your contractor:
- Does the company have construction liability insurance.
- How long have they been in business and have they done the type of work you need to get done.
- Do they have any references that you could call to verify their work.
- Would you get a detailed estimate if you decide to proceed with them.
- Would they provide you with a scope of work, detailing the type of materials and fixtures you will have installed in your project.
- What are their terms of payment. ( You should not give out more than 10 % upfront deposit on a basement project.)
- Do they take payments as the job progress on certain milestones of the project. ( We take payments on the milestone phases of : 20% on completion of framing, 20% on completion of Electrical and Plumbing rough-in, 20% on completion of insulation and drywall installation and taping, 20% on completion of Trim e.g. doors,casing, baseboard, and flooring. Balance of contract upon completion.)
- Would a trades person be at your project every day.
- How long will the project last.
Next will be inspecting the foundation for problems and what you could do about it from inside and outside.
Jerome Sammy
416-885-3987
info@fbscto.com
http://www.fbscto.com/
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