Our house was built in the early 1950's and as a result, the entire basement has 9" by 9" asbestos impregnated tiles. As well, the mastic that was used to secure them was also probably made with asbestos. Over the years, a number of the tiles have cracked and broken down, and so next week we're having a professional asbestos removal company come in and remove the tiles and any mastic that will come off with the tiles. After they do that, they then spray a liquid that hardens and traps any remaining asbestos fibers. At this point, the basement will be ready to have some sort of covering applied. The basement is roughly 1300 sq. ft., and we are now starting to think of what we should be doing to cover the floor. Our options are ceramic tile, sheet linoleum, some sort of epoxy floor covering, or normal concrete paint. My question is what do you guys think would be the best covering? We don't use the basement, except for my workshop, storage, and our laundry room is down there. There is one very small water leak, through a window frame that sits at ground level, but I'll be adding some concrete to the foundation and raising the height of the clearance to about 4 or 5" above ground level, and installing a new window, so for all intents and purposes, I would consider the basement to be completely dry. Thanks for your comments. JJ

Polishing a Concrete Basement Floor My basement concrete floor is in good condition but is old (no vapor barrier underneath), and is 4 feet below grade. As a consequence, the vapor pressure precludes application of epoxy or other coatings -- they'll peal off over time. So I want to polish the concrete, because the resulting surface is permeable to the water vapor. I've asked concrete-polishing contractors to bid on polishing the concrete floor of my basement. Approx. 300 sq. ft. The contractors say the floor is in good condition and can be polished, except that the contractor's polishing machines weigh 600 - 1,000 pounds & there's no way to lift the machine up or down the 5 basement steps. Lighter weight machines are available but these contractors purchased the heavier machines because they can grind & polish more sq. ft. in less time. Could I rent a lighter-weight machine -- say 200 pounds -- and do the job myself? I've used a 200 pound machine to sand hardwood floors, and a machine of this size is manageable with 2 people moving it up/down stairs. But with a light-duty machine like this, how many hours/days would be needed to grind and polish 300 sq. ft. of concrete floor?