Shiny Happy

    

A nice, clean, shiny concrete floor to be trampled upon. What bliss.

The Spray Booth

    
Ahh. Almost there. I finished spraying a second coat of acrylic hi-gloss sealer on the entire concrete floor. It's really gratifying to see all of the texture and color variations that were hidden for so many years come to life with this clear finish. I used an airless sprayer in conjunction with a 3/8" nap roller to even out the finish. The sealer was particularly powerful on the exposed red brick, which was endlessly dry, rough and crumbling. The acrylic clear coat was soaked up by the thirsty brick and grout and the walls are now sealed and water-proof. Now I'm on to sort the pluming drainage system. I expect to core two or three holes in the concrete floor and tie into the vertical sewer drain through the floor below. While doing this I am also finalizing the order for building materials, which I plan to have delivered all at one time.

Scrub a Dub Dub...

    
Oh goody, concrete surface scrubbing! What fun!!!! Ok, it was a lot of work, but surely the end result is worth the effort. This floor has not been cleaned for many, many years and the newly exposed concrete is really impressive. I rented an industrial floor scrubber with a "concrete brush" for the task. I had three gigs and 2 rehearsals over the past weekend, but still found time to painstakingly scrub the floor. This, of course, was accomplished by NOT SLEEPING AT ALL! I caught up on sleep a bit last night and today taped off the kitchen and bath area and laid the first coat of light grey epoxy floor paint. I decided to coat the kitchen and bath area with a solid color for uniformity. After this painted area is dry, I'll be spraying a few coats of acrylic gloss sealer on the entire floor and exposed brick. The photo on the right is the first real glimpse of this brick, which I exposed by carefully chipping away the ailing stucco that once covered it under both of the casement window walls.

When I first started this blog, my dear friend Brando suggested I include photos of myself working on-site to give the blog a sense of human-ness. While I'm not crazy about action shots of myself working on a loft, I figured a still shot of an un-manned concrete floor scrubber would indeed be quite benign...so there I am, in all my flattering glory, conducting said floor scrubber. Hope this helps make my blog a bit more personable.

Isle of White!

    
I've finally taken a break to make a new post. As you can see, the room is a bit brighter after a couple coats of white primer base coat. Two weeks may seem like a long stretch for a couple coats of primer, but it's the prep work you don't see that takes time. With the help of my new Makita cordless tools, including a 4-1/2" angle grinder (thanks guys!), I removed a number metal anchor bolts, conduit supports, etc. from the ceiling and did what seemed like endless patching on the ceiling, walls and support columns. One big obstacle was sealing the back wall (not shown) that had separated from the concrete pillars, floor and ceiling. There were gaps as big as 1" wide, some exposing daylight! I used strips of pink insulation as a barrier and then sealed off the gaps with Great Stuff expandable spray foam. There were also a number of gaps and cracks from the outside, in the hallway, that needed patching and sealing. It's a bloody old building that just simply hasn't been very well kept. I'm currently onto preparing the floor for a cleaning with a rotary scrubber and TSP (trisodium phosphate). The floor has a number of holes, presumably for anchoring heavy machinery from the room's past life. I've just begun filling these with a rapid set concrete mix. Once the the floor is prepped, I'll be diving into coating it with a high-gloss sealer or clear two part epoxy coat.