Tearing it up!

It was a little crazy at our place last week--as they were tearing up chunks of our floor boards!

Our building, a warehouse converted into artist lofts, has pine floors that haven't really stood up too well. Our new unit had more than the usual splintered boards, but our bigger concern was that a number of boards were "sinking" when you walked over them due to the sub-floor being in poor shape. The management company agreed to replace boards...about 50 in total.

Of course, this project would have been much easier to accomplish the month the unit sat empty before we moved in...but that would be too easy! So on Wednesday, we moved all our furniture to the side, packed up fragile items, threw drop cloths over just about everything and the work began. What a mess!

Things got a lot more stressful on Thursday, when we saw that nothing was being done to fix the sub-floor ... even in the places where you could clearly see how the floor would sink with any pressure on it. And then the boards came in...Now I wasn't expecting a match, but the new boards were very light in color compared to the old boards. And we were told the boards wouldn't be stained or varnished for quite some time! 

Every time I looked at the work in progress, my heart sank. This is after all my home and space that I open up to the public for open studio events. And to top it all off, within 24 hours we saw boards splintering where the sub-floor was in the worst shape (and is the walkway to the bathroom).

We invited management in when the project was completed Friday afternoon and have, I think, negotiated some sort of resolution. Unfortunately, some boards are going to need to be ripped up (again!) and the sub-floor be repaired somehow. We'll probably need to do a bit of sanding (more dust!) and then try to stain the boards a bit to bring them closer in color to the weathered boards. Finally, we will need to varnish...which may mean we need to be out of our unit for a few days. Yikes!!!

But for now, we've removed the drop cloths and furniture is back in place...at least for a little while!