Removing carpet in basement--question about finish
we have (had) a 24x17 carpeted rec room in basement of house we built 20 yrs ago. have had a little water seepage along one area (about 8' long by 18" wide) but only when it rains 5"+ in 6 hrs and only in last year. We use a "to daylight" gravity system instead of sump pump and have made some corrections that may/may not have resolved this rather recent problem--but haven't had another deluge to test our corrections yet. so we don't plan to "finish" the floor immediately until we can test the solution.
In meantime we've decided to take out the 20yr old carpet that is little past its prime--plus I use one half of room for my long arming and want a hard surface in order to make thread/lint clean up easier.
We'd tried to get kids from church to do the work--the workers are so busy that they have no time! And our son and DIL normally would be willing to drive the 3.5hrs to help, but he's working much overtime on the weekends and can't turn down the time &half opportunities. S0 after moving all the stuff we could into the storage area,my DH and I decided to start this ourselves. Well, since I'd already pulled out a big chunk of area that had gotten wet 2 weeks ago, we had the tools. And today we managed to pull out and load into pick-up what amounts to 2/3 of the room. Both hurting now! Will work on the last 1/3 one day next week.
The concrete is fairly clean and we'd talked about using chemical etching and then staining (something my DH had done at work) but the padding was tacked down with a drizzle of glue and we aren't sure the etching chemical will remove completely--my DH says a product he used at work for removing vandalism may work. But we are wondering if we smooth it(but the glue stain there) painting floor would be easier than staining. Anyone have experience with all this and know??