February 17, 2020 and on–carpet tiles!

June 14, 2020 by Tim Swartz

After we got all the ceiling tiles in, we cleaned the floor, and asked Country Floors to start installing the carpet tiles in the cafeteria section of the basement–most of the tables, all the chairs and the KT&P shelves were still stored in the alcove.

Caleb from Country Floors starts to clean up the floor–carbide knives on the rotary head scrape off any loose paint, to give a solid surface for the carpet tile adhesive to grip to

Once the floor was scraped, it was time to fill the seams, and any holes in the concrete. Lots of time on the knees for these guys!

Now the installers are rolling on the water-based adhesive (no solvent fumes!) on the scraped and patched floor.

The first section is laid–the redder-colored tiles from the base of the stairs, and the start of a 36″ wide “path” around the front of the bathrooms and the kitchen. The grayer-colored tiles fill the rest of the area. They hide the dirt even better!

After a couple of days of work, the tiles are laid, all the way to the North end of the cafeteria! You can see the KT&P shelves, bins and other items still piled in the alcove….

….so we got in a few volunteers, mostly from the Kids Trade & Play volunteer corps, to move all the stuff out of the alcove and make room for the carpet installers. Above are Dean and Oliver.

Here are Stephen, Ginger and Fred re-assembling the KT&P shelves. It’s great to have a hard-working crew like these folks!

And now the tiles are laid in the alcove! Plus the new ceiling tiles installed above. We hope we can develop this area to be a small-scale performance space–think “coffee-house” size. The red tiles are designed to set off this area as somewhat different from the cafeteria.

Then it was time for Country Floors to install carpet on the stairs. Quite a change from the way the stairs used to look!

We hope that the carpet, as well as being much more attractive, will remove some of the dirt and/or moisture from the shoes of people going down to the lower level. Our cleaning service will be cleaning the stairs regularly, of course!

Also, see the next set of photos for our other dirt-capturing innovation!