Today began early – with a quick trip to nearby St Albans to collect the sanding equipment to remove the potentially 50 year old varnish (and carpet glue) and prepare the wood floor for the coffee shop – It has the potential for being so beautiful!
Preparing the floor took a while, as there were scores of nails and staples to take out and hammer down. Once a lot of crawling had taken place Justin started up the sander , whilst Mark and I worked on sanding the edges and getting rid of the carpet glue. It was a long a tedious job – but with the additional help of a few DTS students we definately made a good crack at the job.
We also opened the fireplace and were a little shocked at the tiling behind the boards. As Mark suggested – it looks like the tiles were taken from the castle in the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast!! I will not be upset to get rid of those!
At the end of the day we had gotten most of the glue up and half of the floor done – so tomorrow we will look at finishing the edges and also doing a final sand with fine sand paper so that we have a smooth finish!! Progress is not as fast as I thought but the room is looking good already!