Each year, thousands of Arizona residents email or call Rosie Romero’s radio show with questions about everything from preventing fires in their chimneys to getting rid of tree roots invading their sewer system. His goal is to provide answers that suit the specific lifestyle wherever someone lives in Arizona.
Q: I have a 2,200-square-foot house that used to have a sunken living room, but we put a plywood structure down and then carpeted over it so that all the rooms would be at on the same level. Now we’d like to take all the old flooring out so that we can have a concrete subfloor throughout the house. How do we do that?
A: You’ll have to start by taking out the structure that you built in the living room first. After you empty the living room and any flooring on the slab, you have to ensure that you find no evidence of termite damage on the walls surrounding the slab. In fact, you might want to have a termite inspection and perhaps even treat the floor before filling in the living room just for safety’s sake. You may have to hire a contractor for this job because it’s possible you have to make some adjustments in the surrounding walls as well. Eventually, you’ll have to bring in an aggregate course of new concrete to fill in the hole you created.
For more do-it-yourself tips, go to rosieonthehouse.com. An Arizona home building and remodeling industry expert for 25 years, Rosie Romero is the host of the syndicated Saturday morning Rosie on the House radio program, heard locally from 8-11 a.m. on KNST-AM (790) in Tucson and KGVY-AM (1080) and -FM (100.7) in Green Valley. Call 888-767-4348.
