Top of the Tower: Lugging A 120-Pound Sander Up Three Flights

Andrew Averill Headshot
The plainsawn pine floors of the church bell tower were in rough shape.
The plainsawn pine floors of the church bell tower were in rough shape.

The plainsawn pine floors of the church bell tower were in rough shape.The plainsawn pine floors of the church bell tower were in rough shape. 

How long would it take you to climb two flights of stairs and another set of steps mortised-near vertically-into the wall... while lugging a 128-pound sander? Twenty minutes-that's how slow-moving it was for Durham, N.C.-based Accent Hardwood Flooring Inc.'s team as they took the 110 belt sander up to the bell tower at the Duke Memorial United Methodist Church. 

If they thought the hardest part was getting the equipment up, they were wrong. The floors were "horrible. Less than average. They were in really bad shape," said Genia Smith, Accent's owner. The floors were plainsawn pine, and Smith didn't know how old they were, just that they were "really old." 

The tower houses a 10-bell carillon that has been active since 1908. The tower was refinished to honor the first employed chimer, Louis Blalock. He played the bells at noon each day for 30 years, and the chimes signaled lunch to the tobacco farm hands laboring in the fields surrounding Durham. 

Project foreman Robert Honeycutt said the effort was rewarding: "I was most proud of taking something that most people would have said is not worth doing … and being able to take something like that and bring it back to life in the end," he says.

 Sanding the floor next to the bell controls.Sanding the floor next to the bell controls.
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