The Saga of the Floor

I've mentioned the floor of the gallery a few times in my posts.  I hear every project has it's one problem area, and ours has been the floor.  Fixing it has thrown our budget out of whack by a few thousand dollars, but at least we should be able to open on Tuesday with (finally) the perfect floor.


I wish I had taken more pictures (click the photos below for bigger images), but let me try to describe what we started with.  The space used to be a bridal salon, complete with white carpet (stained, of course, after years of wear), and clearly not what we wanted for Cain Schulte Gallery.  

Pulling up the carpet was easy.  But what we found was a mix of:

• 100 year old softwood painted dark green in places, and brown in others
• cement mortar in stripes and patches across the wood (apparently to smooth the floor for the carpet)
• plywood
• swirls of carpet glue with flecks of old carpet pad still attached
• green spray paint
• hundreds of nails and staples sticking out of the floor

Marina's first choice when she first started negotiations 7 months ago (before I was involved) was for carpet tiles, at a very expensive cost.  After negotiations with the landlord broke down (another long story) and Andre and I got involved, we decided on a polished cement, but that too was over our budget.  We settled on two-part epoxy floor paint, hoping two coats would cover the mess, but it only highlighted the different textures of the floor, and not in a flattering way.

Here's what it looked like with the paint (click image for detail):

So we made a last minute decision to redo the floor.  Found a credible handyman type who had done it before and had time to do it this weekend for a decent price.  We'll re-open on Tuesday morning at 11:00 with (hopefully) a brand new floor.

We'll need to seal the floor with a few coats of sealant before our opening party on Friday, to avoid staining of the porous concrete.  Fun job for our Tuesday and Wednesday evenings!  

More pictures soon with the new floor.  Come visit and see for yourself!  And come to the party on Friday April 16, from 5-9 if you're in town.


Next posting will be on another favorite artist at Cain Schulte -- Michael Tole.

Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.