The Floor

One of the things that make the church special is the floor. Such a simple thing, a floor. You stand on it, you walk on it, you track mud across it, it holds you up. If there were no floor, you would not feel weight!

Weight = physics!

Not to get too nerdy, but floors are important. So let's get busy making the floor look better.

Some of the floor had to be patched due to nature's fury. Nature was let in through a hole in the roof years ago. 

Fixing Nature's Wrath.

In order to smooth things out and marry all the floor boards together, we got a sander from Menards. This was the granddaddy of all sanders.

Granddad means business!

Let's see the business end of this monster…

We mean you no harm!

But it was rented to discipline the floor. And discipline it did. The floor- and ME! 

mmm HMMM! 

Yes, the memory of  nearly vapor-locking the last time we sanded is fresh in our memories, but this time should be the last time, and we have a monster three disc sander to help. So let's get to it. Unfortunately, there were places that required the belt sander. The benefit of the belt sander is that it is really powerful. The downside of the belt sander is that it really tears your abdominal muscles up when you use it. But maybe that's a benefit…

Better than an Ab-roller!

And then there's the aerobic benefit of breathing through the mask…oh how I grew to love the mask. 

Smells like…nothing!

Before you knew it, the floors were smooth. Smoothish. Kinda smooth. Omigosh they are from the 1880's! They are distressed! But distressed is in vogue, so we're all set. 

Vogue?

Next comes the fun part. 

We had to polyurethane it.

Wow!

What a difference a little bit of chemicals can make. 

My turn.

 We did it in turns. It "turns" out that Mike did most of the turns on the first coat, but I did all the turns on the second coat since he had to go back to work. 

Vive la difference!

Oh wow! It was surprisingly athletic! Quite a workout.

Can you just smell the difference?

The smell lingered…

But it was a way better smell than the smell when we first walked into the place 3.5 years ago. Progress, not perfection. And some people like the smell of freshly poly-ed wood.

and some people sniff glue…

Well, it was all worth it, I think.

ahh!

And so! The floor that will hold you up AND look nice! 

At last!