HI Kec01, I am not a professional but I am married to one. Bad news is yes, you will need to remove the concrete patio. Good news is you can do this yourself. Sledgehammers and a couple of Saturdays should do the trick. Remove the concrete. Dig in some French drains line them with crushed limestone (57). Place the pvc pipe in the trenches directing the water away from your foundation. Back fill the trenches with more stone. Level the pitch away from your home and then put down a screening of sand or crushed limestone on top and begin putting in your pavers. Make sure your pavers are also following the pitch away from the house. Add or remove stone as needed while placing pavers. This should direct the water shed away from your foundation and leave you with a nice patio. If you continue to have water leaks in the basement then please call in a contractor. You may have blocked or broken drain tiles along the bottom of the foundation that need snaking out or replacement. Usually happens with ceramic drain tile. Good luck. If you would like a more professional answer email me and I will get the hubby to answer any! Good luck, Tracy

April-- The plastic can be either 6 mil polyethlene (which can be found in the paint aisles at HD or Lowes, or 15 pound tar paper (in the roofing area). Just staple it to the studs, and make sure the bottome edge sits over the tub's flange against the studs. We will scrap the 1/4" OSB and get some 1/2" ply instead. Should it be exterior grade? Absolutely. BC or AC exterior grade. It really shouldn't be CDX because there are too many voids in it. We had to remove the subfloor that was under the old tub so we are down to the joists there. What should we put under the tub? You should have exactly the same subfloor under the tub as you do under the hardi board in the rest of the bathroom. No need for the Hardi under the tub, though. The ONLY reason for the hardi is a more stable bonding surface for the tile thinset. Do you have any experience with the Mapei grout and grout maximizer that we are planning to use? There's no need for the "maximizer". Read that as taking money from those who don't know better. These grouts are already modified. But these places are trying to maximize their profits, capitolizing on the "stainfree" thing going on. All that maximizer is, is a liquid latex additive, and that would be fine for a grout that's not modified yet. To the best of my knowledge, the only company that even MAKES an unmodified grout any more is Hydroment, and they're pretty hard to find. The laticrete grouts they have a Lowes are every bit as good as the Mapei (and as far as I'm concerned, better), but even there, they will try and talk you into using a grout additive. Don't waste the money. What do you recommend for a grout sealer? Rather than type it all out, I'll let you ckeck out my FAQ on the gallery side of this forum, and that'll explain my stance on grout sealers. Any tips on getting the subfloor and hardieboard tight to the toilet flange? We have an old cast iron one that will be staying in but we want to make sure to build the subfloor up to it. you really want that flange to be sitting pon top of the subfloor, at the very least, if not on top of the hardi board. If it doesn't, you're going to have leakage of the STANKY kind.

I actually thought about replacing the bank of upper cabinet on that side of the kitchen, since we are replacing all of the doors. (The difference in height would be minimal.) We have recessed cabinet pulls, and I now want actual handles. The refrigerator is relatively new, as we left room for a "slightly wider" albeit slightly taller model when we replaced the cabinets. :) I have friends remodeling their kitchen and replacing almost the same square footage of flooring throughout the kitchen and main living area, so I'll see how their project goes. At the moment we are getting a new roof, and my husband surprisingly does not seem to mind the clatter of men stomping about overhead, tearing up shingles and nailing down tin caps, much less the wild barking and room-to-room dashing of our very excited dog! Thank you so much for your input - I'll let you know what we do!

I hope that is 20” above grade . I looked on google it seems it can be tiled so I guess the next is to get a tiler to check it out and give you the pros and cons. I am curious about why geofoam? It looks cool for many uses I guess since it is used in pool contruction and roof top patios to name a couple. I would wonder how it stands up over time.