The Foundation is Set!

May we never have to work on floors again!  

What a taxing experience.  This kind of torture was probably eliminated when Obama made the Army Field manual as the only accepted form of interrogation.  Alex, Stentz, and Brandon all helped me chisel, scrape, and hammer to get this drywall-like stuff off the floor.  Once that was all done it looked pretty good and I was thinking of adding some stain to it. 

 

(before stain after chisel)

The next morning I went to what is turning into my new hang, the local Home Depot, to check out what they had.  Blame it on the sleepiness or lack of coffee, I picked up concrete paint in the black variety and headed back to the shop.  With paint roller ready to go, I covered the entire floor up in a couple of hours.  Happy with my efficiency and the ability to be done working by 1pm, I met up with some friends and grabbed some food. 

The next day I get up and head down to the store to find the floor black (duh!), and I mean BLACK.  Like the kind of black that if you walk on with shoes, you see the entire lap made around the space.  NOT GOOD!   This was definitely not going to work for a retail space.

(this paint should've been named Danzig black)

After yelling a couple of expletives I headed back to Home Depot to pick up paint stripper. Back at the store with paint roller in hand, I proceed to attack about 10 square feet over a period of 6 hours.  Not only was the stuff messy, but the progress was going at a snail's pace.  I felt defeated and had to rethink my plan.  This is when I called my old friend David Oh, who owns a couple of markets in Los Angeles.  He directed me to Jorge Morales of J&C Commercial Maintenance.  Not only was Jorge the nicest guy in the world, he said he could do the floors in a day for cheap!  Life save, floor saved, conscience cleared.

(Present Day)

They may not look like much to you, but it's exactly how we want them.  Worn out, warehouse looking floors.  We are kinda going for this whole used/vintage turn of the century look and we couldn't be happier.

Now that this is done and the painting of the walls is complete, we are going to start building the floors for the lofted office space/storage area.  More on that tomorrow...

xo

Neil