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!

Guest Workers

Got Grit?

Here you see the gritty grin of a person sanding beautiful wood. Cherry, at this moment. Every piece of wood you are about to see came from a tree. I say this because it has never been so real to me before. Such a simple idea, yet so much work! Trees are not smooth, nor are they beveled or cut to size. That all had to be done piece by piece. Not complainin'. Just es'planin'!

At the end of March, we had some guest-workers. Meet Vickie and Kevin.  C'mon, let's get busy!

There's Kevin, helping plane some wood.

Planin', not complainin'!

 The Altar piece has been the center of attention for some weeks, but other jobs are calling. Here's Vickie getting gritty with the antique light fixtures. Go Vickie!

Scrubbing

Lights Before...

And after. Viva La Difference!

And we sent Kevin to the corner...to sand the floors.

You've been very very bad!

But the floors look very, very good!

Scrubbing

Meanwhile more vertical action on the Altar Piece.

Evening Light

We had a nice visit with Kevin and Vickie, but the weekend came to a close and the Altar Piece was still not done.

Thanks, guest workers! See you in a few weeks!

Water Hole

One of last big changes for the Church is to have running water inside. Yes. This beautiful old church has never had indoor plumbing, in all the 135 years of services, weddings,  Christmases, funerals, and even during the recent Reign of Raccoons.

We need a potty!

So in December of 2014, we started excavating the stage in the front of the church. We needed room for a water tank, and that was a logical place to put it. Of course, we didn't realize that there was a floor under the stage, so taking out the floor was a two step process!

Two levels of stage. Who knew?

We have to get down to the bottom of this! The tank is here!

300 gallons of agua, coming soon!

It's going to lay flat in the space cut out of the stage.
Cutting out the flooring out was a messy job, as usual.

Is it snowing in here? 

No, it's just the usual airborne dust. It was definitely time for masks. While Mike worked on the stage, I fiddled with another project: the doors.

We found these old wooden doors in the antique shop in Bay City, Michigan where our set of display cases is currently being housed. They are gorgeous, no? That is if you can see under the paint and the fact that they will have to be totally resized to fit the Church.

Imagine it the size of the blue tape. With no paint!

Mike sanded the flat side and the paint came off well.

Belt sanders are powerful.

Sometimes a little too powerful, as we found out.

Divots happen…

The other side had the interesting bits. The fiddly bits. That's the side that I attended to. 

It's in rough shape.

The paint was actually pretty thin- just a layer of primer and the black, making us wonder if they had been redone before.

Comes right off.

Progress:

More elbow grease, please?

The fiddly bits had to be done by hand.

Better, but not best. 

It turns out that there is a tool that is made for this kind of work. Fiddly work. It's a sander that looks like an iron! It's the Ryobi Corner Cat!

I assume "ponceuse" means sander!

It's very green.

It's very interesting…sniff sniff…

And, most importantly, it's awesome for the job.

Works like a charm.

It came as a surprise from Mike, and it is now my favorite piece of equipment, after the Robosaw, of course.

Robosaw has been repositioned for maximum convenience. 

More on the amazing Robosaw in the next issue! For now, we'll let the dust settle.

But it's almost February!!

Stay tuned for wood, amazing wood!

Floored Part II

Last week in our exciting episode of "Let's Renovate an Old Church in Our Spare Time" we left halfway done with the floors. So what was it like to go back at it the following weekend?

It was awesome. It was like getting back on the horse, after you had fallen and broken all the tender bits on your body!

The Stage is set for more work...

And work it was.

Plug and play!

When we finished last weekend, it felt like we might be halfway done. Or even more!

Nope.

Lots more to love.

But it won't get done by wishing, so let's get started!

First we used the large sander. Last week we had the drum sander, but we wanted to try the circular one. It had about the same effect. It took off the top layers a little quicker than the drum sander, but it was a lot trickier to handle. If you tried to steer it,  it had a tendency to spin off into its own circular spasm of cyclonic motion, taking the handler with it. But if you got all zen with it and let it do its thing, it would drift along in a cloud of dust and swirl its way down the planks.

Swirly

Gettin Zen widdit.

But to really finish the job, the Bronco had to be engaged.

Engaging the Bronco

You can see the difference.

Bronco Mike and his Bulging Biceps!

Viva La Difference!

And so it went. Circular swirls and Bronco bucking.

Next thing you know,

Are we done yet? 

Yeah, we got done. But did I get a shot of it?

Not really, so this will have to do.

Dunzo.