Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Storm damage to HT room?

Anyways, while I'm at it, I'm currently replacing my kitchen floor, probably this weekend, (prepping it now), then install a door leading downstairs to the new proposed HT room. Need to keep the cat out of my workspace sometimes. In the meantime, I'm purchasing ceramic floor tile for the Fireplace side of the room. Will pick up the last 2 boxes of it I need this evening.

As I was taking pictures of my fireplace, and thinking about how I was going to give it a facelift, I discovered that my cat has hypnotic eyes that flash messages to my brain, telling me things like, "You will feed me big fish", "You will pet me until your hands are raw", "No, you cannot leave the house for many naps at a time, but must stay home and do MY bidding." "Ha ha ha ha".

Actually, when I bring that image into Photoshop and read the embedded image data, it reads "My plan to have lots of things break to ruin you financially was only partially successful. I will kill you in your sleep before the year is out".

You know, I think you may be right. Maybe I should drink poison in order to thwart her plans.

What I've been up to lately. Here's a picture of my kitchen floor. I've removed a broken dishwasher and pushed the fridge out of the way. So far, I've removed the bumpy areas in the plywood subfloor and reset the nails. Now I've applied 2 gallons of pre-mixed leveler to the floor. I've still got a little ways to go yet. I've tried sanding it but not having a lot of luck. I think I'm going to have to buy a belt sander with some really course grit and do it that way. Once this leveler dries, it's as solid as concrete.

It's called Henry 345 premixed patch and level. When I removed the old vinyl tiles, the plywood shredded in several spots which created some bad low spots. This leveler seems to fill them up and work just fine. When I'm done, I'm going to install new sheet vinyl in a 12 x 12 foot piece that I ordered and should have next Monday. I didn't want to use 1/4 inch underlayment because I want the new vinyl to fit up snug and level to the hardwood floor that's already there, like the vinyl tiles used to do.

Any recommendations on a belt sander? I was looking at the $50 to $70 range, but I think I probably need to up that to the $200 to $300 range to get one that will do the job and have enough oomph left over to not be totally trashed by the time I'm done.

For doing serious mat'l removal like levelling a floor I'd look at something with 10+ amps. If you think you might want to use the sander on some "finer" work in the future, you might also want to consider a VS(variable speed) sander. I bought myself a Makita 7.8amp sander a few years ago to level some heaves in my floor before installing hardwood but I should have got the 11amp model as the 7.8 , though reliable, was underpowered for such work imo. I would think any of the brand names should track well, but it seems like Bosch, Porter Cable and Makita get the better overall reviews from what I've seen. I believe Bosch might also make belt sanders for Sears so you might check some of the Craftsmans out too. Anyway, look for something with extra power....ARR...ARR...ARR!!

So far, just from seeing what's in nearby stores and the internet, the Portercable 362 with 4x24 and 12 amp looks good, but I haven't seen one in the stores yet, just Amazon. I'd rather buy locally, probably Sears will be my next stop and see what they've got. I'm not real fond of Sears because of poor quality stuff I've bought in the past for good quality prices.