Cement Flooring? What do you think? (vacuum, paint, smell, bathrooms)

[Katzy]

We moved into our new house about a month ago. It's LITERALLY "wall to wall" carpeting, except in the bathrooms, kitchen, laundry room. Even the master bath (except toilet area) is carpet. It's a foreclosure, so we don't know how many pets were here, but I keep vacuuming up black dog hair and I smell urine in some rooms. ICK!

Anywho - We are going to rip up the carpet...and I really like the look of stained concrete floors. What do you think of them? Do you have them? Are they really expensive to have done? How is the maintenance? Do they last?

Otherwise we'll go with some sort of wood or fake wood that we can DIY if concrete is really expensive.

Thanks!

[BobKovacs]

You can have a concrete floor stained and sealed for as little as $2-3/sf, or you can spend $15/sf- it all depends on how you want it to look, and how long you want it to last. A few things to bear in mind:

- There's a good possibility that the slab doesn't look that great- spray paint/markings from when the house was built, paint/drywall splatter, cracks (concrete always cracks), patches where they moved plumbing that was incorrectly placed, etc. It can take a lot of work (and $$) to make the slab look presentable.

- Your baseboards are probably sitting 1/2" or so above the slab, which allowed the carpet to slip under them. This will require that you either lower the baseboards or put in a big piece of shoe molding to conceal the gap.

- If you're smelling urine, you've likely already got "stained concrete" and not the kind you're looking for. It can be a real bear to get the smell (and the stain) out of the concrete.

[Katzy]

Thank you for the helpful information. I have no idea what it looks like underneath. Hmmmm....I'll show your post to hubby. Thanks again!

[GregW]

Pull up a corner of the carpet behind a chair or something and find out what is there before you do anything else. The carpet is held down by a strip of nail like things and should just peel up.