Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 7, The Floor Problem

The adventure continues on our stone Carriage House gym project. Today, we’re talking about the concrete floor problem.

Or shall we call it an opportunity?

Hmm. I’m not feeling that generous yet. It really was an issue. The worst part is we should have seen it coming.

Here’s how we got in this predicament.

We took down a non load-bearing stone wall in a very old building.

I’m not casually or disrespectfully throwing out the old adjective. This building was originally a garage for a horse-drawn carriage and dates back to the late 1700s. Old is a compliment.

We use it for a home gym now. I’m sure our forefathers would have some thoughts about this.

What will you find underneath an old stone wall? 

It definitely wasn’t buried treasure.

It was dirt. Lots and lots of dirt.

That part we anticipated. Our brains were working thus far!

We knew we’d have to fill in the space under the wall and were mentally prepared for it.

As you can see in the above photo, the floor on either side of that stone wall is concrete.

We finally caught a break with this project!

We considered ourselves SO lucky that someone in the 1950s or 1960s poured a concrete floor in this building. Thank you, anonymous stranger. You saved us a ton of time, money, and effort.

Or did you? 

When we removed the wall and could see the concrete floors on either side of the dirt gap, it was an instant “oh crud” moment.

Except we didn’t say crud. It was more of a creative run-on sentence. We don’t need to repeat it.

What caused this reaction?

The two concrete floors were not level to each other. At all.

It wasn’t that they were a tiny bit off. It was more like two or three inches difference in height right smack dab in the middle of the room.

*takes a deep breath* 

You can kind of see this difference at the bottom of the below photo. The floor on the right side is significantly higher than the floor on the left under the plastic.

*takes another deep breath*

In fairness, why would the floors be poured at the same level?

The floors didn’t connect while the wall existed. The rooms didn’t connect to each other. They didn’t need to be level. They were poured on top of dirt, not a subfloor.

We would not have made sure they were at the same level had we poured the concrete, so why would we expect this from someone else?

It shouldn’t have caught us off guard when we discovered the floors weren’t level, but we truly didn’t think about it until the obvious was staring us right in the face.

*the deep breaths are not working*

What did we do? 

We went through the stages of grief, that’s for sure.

Then we decided to remove a section of concrete about 4-ft x 9-ft in size. This was the highest level of concrete.

We had a pallet of 50 bags of concrete delivered.

That’s 4,000 pounds of concrete mix that we had to move from the driveway down to the Carriage House.

It’s never not funny to me that the purpose of this entire project is to expand our home gym and the project in and of itself is a rigorous workout.

Then came the hard part.

We aren’t oil barons or trust fund babies. Sad, I know.

We really wish we were though because we hadn’t budgeted for this extra expense.

Hiring this concrete job out didn’t seem economical since we don’t have a trust fund to dip into. This is a big job physically for one handy husband, but it’s a minuscule job for a concrete company. If we could even get someone to come out in a timely manner, it would be cost prohibitive for us.

So, of course, we poured the concrete ourselves.

We do own a concrete mixer and it has received a fair bit of use in the last five years. That’s one tool that has paid for itself.

If it looks like the concrete area expanded beyond the original 4 ft x 9 ft section, congrats to your eagle eyes. When we removed the plastic that was covering the finished side of the room and pulled up the floor mats under the weight equipment, we realized there were several sections of cracked concrete hiding in plain sight. It’s not simply that they were cracked, but now that these cracked sections weren’t tied into the wall we removed, they were loose.

*more deep breaths that don’t help and creative vocabulary that might*

We pulled all the loose chunks of concrete flooring out, and crossed our fingers that we had ordered enough concrete to fix a much bigger expanse of floor. Once you start pouring concrete, you can’t just stop in the middle to run to the hardware store for more supplies. Sadly, you also can’t stop for snacks. Wet concrete waits for no one.

The process wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be.

Thanks to our active imaginations, we went straight to doomsday mode with this part of the project. However, it only took about 45 bags of concrete and 5 hours to pour the new floor.

Handy Husband did most of the work by himself. He said it was easier than he thought it would be because of the weightlifting he’s been doing for the past nine months.

Same.

Kidding.

Bags of concrete weigh 80 pounds each. While I can lift that, I’m not the most efficient at manhandling 80-pound bags into a concrete mixer that holds roughly 2.5 bags of concrete at one time. Handy Husband did all of the heavy lifting for this job.

He also did all of the finish work, since he has experience in that field thanks to a job running a concrete pump in his early 20s.

I mainly helped by keeping the right amount of water in the mixer and handing him tools. Someone’s got to do it.

The floor is not perfect, but what is? 

Handy Husband wasn’t thrilled that we couldn’t pour this floor all in one go due to the logistics of getting in and out of the building. This means our floor has an extra cold joint.

That term makes me laugh, but it’s a real one!

It’s where one concrete pour starts to set up before the next round of concrete goes in. This can lead to cracking.

So, the floor won’t be perfect. Shocking, I know.

The good news is that the floor is no longer dirt.

The even better news is that the concrete floor will be covered up by gym mats. We won’t ever see those cracks if they appear.

I’m not saying you should hide your problems under a rug, but I am saying rugs or gym mats are really useful.

We are so close to being able to use this space. 

It makes us feel so happy to finally be in the home stretch with this project. We started working on it three months ago. The hardest things, like the floor and walls, are out of the way, and that is a relief.

What do you think about how far we’ve come? Would you have poured this concrete yourselves? Let me know. You can always comment on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook. I respond to all of your comments and sometimes even in a timely manner!

Thanks for following along with this project. We appreciate the support and encouragement more than you’ll ever know. If you missed any of the past posts in this series, here they are:

Stone Carriage House Gym Expansion Part 1

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 2, Demo

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 3, Old Windows

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 4, Pipes In Stone Walls

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 5, Adding a Window In a Stone Wall

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 6, How to Remove a Stone Wall