I’m floored by how easy this was (Part 1)

Ugh, I’m a slacker, I know. I promise to be more vigilant with the blog updates. Things have been quite busy at the house and we’re slowly moving things from Erin’s parent’s house into our place. Lots of progress this past month so lets get cracking.

First though, we’ve been debating with a subheading for our blog. The first one that came to my mind was “Watch us wreck our house so you don’t have to.” It was a tad negative so instead we agreed on, “If we can do it, you can do it.”

Okay, so we have this ugly floor, that may or may not be asbestos or have asbestos glue connecting them. Let me go on a little tangent first about house inspections - they are incredibly valuable if you use a good inspector.

We lucked out. Our inspector came recommended from our lawyer and was great. He not only inspected the house for the major issues (foundation, termites, fire hazards, mold, etc.) but also gave us general house maintenance hints and showed us how certain things work. It’s not like your house comes with a user manual. I still don’t know if our hot water heater is actually on or not (mental note: check into that before moving in).

Anyhow, his inspection report has become our Moneypit Bible. I took all of his notes, comments, suggestions, etc. and put them into an Excel spreadsheet (have I mentioned I have an Excel addiction?). For each task, I did some research and got estimates of how much they would cost to do. I added other cosmetic tasks (such as painting) as well as new appliances and furniture and voila, I have a budget to work with.

As new tasks come up I do the same thing. I also created separate tabs in Excel for each major task (e.g. Plumbing, Electric, Painting, Kitchen, etc.) and on each tab, I list the name/description of an expense related to it and how much it actually cost. On the main tab of my Excel workbook I have my budget subtracting the actual costs to show me how much over or under budget we are. If you want a blank Excel workbook like this to check out, let us know and I can email you one.

Alright, back to the tiles. I did some research on asbestos tiles and glue and found out a few interesting tidbits. If you bought a house that was built in the 1950s (like we did) more than likely they used asbestos tiles or glue. At the time, it was a proven fire proofing material and the dangerous effects were not well-known. Hell, people smoked eight packs of cigarettes a day back then and didn’t think twice about it. So you can’t blame anyone for wanting to prevent fires in their house with an unknown material.

Asbestos is only dangerous if ingested (yum) or if the dust is inhaled (usually consistently, but why risk inhaling any of it?). So if your tile is friable (i.e. easily breakable/crumbly) and you think it may be asbestos, consult an expert and get some tests done. Tests are rather inexpensive to get done. Most asbestos tiles were 9x9 in size, so if you have 12x12 or 12x10 tiles, there is a high probability they are not asbestos.

As for the asbestos glue, you can test this out yourself (wearing gloves and a mask, of course) by pouring some boiling water on an exposed section of glue. If it bubbles, it’s not asbestos. If it pools up, yeah, it’s probably asbestos.

Now, I haven’t done any of this. I know, do as I say, not as I do. I will try this out on the washer/dryer side of the basement where there are some exposed areas but for the “manpit” side of the basement, there were no cracked areas so I decided to just cover it up with a layer of tiles to avoid contact/any damage to the potential asbestos tiles.

Covering asbestos tiles is a solution that can be safe and inexpensive. Many experts even suggest covering instead of removal due to safety/disposal reasons (especially avoid removal as a DIYer -- leave removal to experts).

Removing asbestos tile and replacing them with new tile can be quite costly (talking several thousands of dollars here) so if it’s not in your immediate budget, you can put peel and stick tiles over them or, like we did, use floating tiles that lay on top of them. This will ensure that the tiles cannot be damaged/cracked and help avoid exposure to the asbestos dust. This can buy you some time to get further testing done and save up enough for safe removal and new tiles should you not be comfortable with knowing there is asbestos in your house.

In part 2 of this installment, I’ll go into step-by-step detail on installing floating tiles and turn those drab tiles into something that better suits your room’s personality.

Stay tuned, thanks for reading, and hope it helps!