floor repair

Flooring Saga Continues

Posted on August 18, 2019Leave a comment

This weekend we continued to work on the downstairs flooring. This is the before on the West side. We have been working with no air conditioning. The front has holes where our contractor is rebuilding the windows. There is no sense in turning the AC on until the front is complete. Today was only 101 degrees:)

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And the after. It’s still wet. It will dry with a satin sheen. UNADJUSTEDNONRAW thumb 35f9

We are almost complete downstairs. Once the store front is complete, we will finish painting everything, mount the baseboards, and cleanup the center columns. Stay tuned for what’s coming next:)

History Revealed

Posted on August 11, 20191 Comment

It’s been a few weeks since the last update. A lot has happened since then. History has been revealed in the front of the building. For right now we are rebuilding the area above the existing store front. We will be reusing the existing glass/doors and repaint everything once its complete.

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One incredible item uncovered was the original steel column on the North West corner of the building. The new design will have the tops of the columns above the glass exposed. UNADJUSTEDNONRAW thumb 35d1

While the front demolition/rebuild is going on we are finishing the floor.

The floor after the repairs and sanding.

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And now here is the floor with the first coat of stain and sealant.

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1st Floor Flooring

Posted on June 23, 2019Leave a comment

The 1st floor is almost complete. The floor joists have been replaced, the original flooring relaid, and everything has been rough sanded. All that is left is to fill some rough areas, final sanding, and then a clear sealant.

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We want to keep the original look. The plan is to just apply a clear sealant.

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There is one issue we did run into this past week. We had some heavy rains and detected a leak above the front windows. At one time there were windows above the store front. A long time ago they closed them up with wood and mortar. Years of neglect and termite damage is causing water to seep in. We have a contractor starting this week. They are going to remove all the damaged wood, rebuild the facade, and then paint everything making it look new.

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Floor Joist Replacement

Posted on May 27, 2019Leave a comment

This week they delivered the new floor joists and started the replacement.

Here are the new 2×10’s going in.

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Notice how far they are having to jack up the floor to replace them. In the last 100 years the floor settled at least 6-8 inches in some areas.

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Here are the replacement footings.

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While all of this is going on, we had the windows painted over to add suspense to what is coming:)

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Downstairs Flooring – Projects

Posted on May 19, 2019Leave a comment

This weekend we finished cleaning up under the downstairs floorboards. Our contractor is going to start in 2 weeks on replacing the bad floor joists. Afterwards they will install a new sub-floor and re-install the original floor boards. Finally, we will have them sanded and sealed for another 50 years of usage:)

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Here are the original floorboards to be re-installed. We still need to remove nails and place them in piles based on size to make it easier for the flooring contractor.

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We had to make room in our garage area to place all the extra wood from the retail area. We are storing any extra wood for future projects.

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As for the upstairs, we continue to work on numerous projects. Here is the buffet we just finished painting. We still need to mount a painting above it.

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An overview picture of the buffet placement between the front door and kitchen area.

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In the next couple of weeks we will be finishing the downstairs, having the upstairs front door replaced, and cleaning up the bar stools to be placed along the kitchen island. The front door was not installed correctly and we are having to replace it.

Posted on March 24, 2019Leave a comment

We are still working on the floor downstairs in the retail space. This weekend we pulled up the boards near the east wall. This week we are going to dig out the dirt under the floor joists. Numerous joists have failed and are in need of repair.

Here are some photos so far of the east wall and where the floor joists have failed.

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We are trying to save as much of the wood as possible to keep the original wood floor look.

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And finally a view of some of the other areas needing repair.

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