3″ Deep, Cigarettes & the Maneater –
With the plaster complete (gosh it’s gorgeous), we are in a mad dash to get the floor ready for the new 3/4” oak floor – the material arrives on Thursday.
Plan A: Yank all the staples from the current underlayment. Level it. Put the new oak over that.
Why Plan A sucked hind warts: The linoleum tiles wouldn’t let the staples go.
Plan B: Remove the linoleum tile and its underlayment.
Why Plan B is when the matador battles the blind cobbler: Another 20 cubic yards of garbage. And two days of sawing underlayment and yanking it out.
So I hired a local carpenter/musician to help me – Mike Sadoff. And he’s a frickin’ worker bee. After two days of work we are ahead of schedule. After we pulled off all the modern layers we made it to the original yellow-pine floor. (I measured how much crap we have pulled out since September; it’s almost 3” of thickness.)
And we found that in the front room, the floorboards run diagonally. (Yes, it’s the original floor and not the subfloor. The subfloor runs vertical to the long axis of the building. This true floor is diagonal and is over that. And it has finish on it.)
The diagonal changes the feel of the whole room. It draws the eye right to the bar.
So I called the floor installers. Can you put my floor in on the slant? Yes. But it will cost an extra $900.
Yikes.
I said yes, and I think I’ll have to sell some tools to make this happen.
Two other fun events today: We removed the bar’s original side door, which is bricked over. The door is a gorgeous Victorian example. Original paint. And a cool Chesterfields cigarette sign to boot. We’re going to remove the bricks and put it back as-is. Too awesome.
Second fun event: This building is a man-eater. Mike was repairing the rotted subfloor by the bar and it swallowed him up – trying to take him to the basement. He survived unhurt.
Tomorrow, Mike, John and I are going to finish installing the underlayment. And then drink a gallon of beer each.
— Christopher Schwarz
