Wood Floor Rescue: Preserving a Piece of Montana History

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Kalispell Merchantile

The Kalispell Mercantile building dates to 1892, and it became one of the largest retail and wholesale operations between Seattle and Minneapolis before closing in 1980. By the time wood floor pro Wood floor pro Alex Franklin was charged with preserving the character of the floors in the Kalispell Mercantile building, and he had to throw all of his experience at the renovation project., owner/operator of Kalispell, Mont.-based Revive DecksNFloors LLC arrived during its renovation, five layers of flooring had been removed from the original flooring—maple in the middle and larch on the sides. Gummy black mastic covered a large area, and Franklin couldn’t sand the floor with a drum machine because the owner wanted to preserve the character. “He wanted me to keep the patina, the scratches—there’s all kinds of crazy stuff in there from the carts they rolled across the floor,” Franklin says. “If I sanded it harder, it would have taken all of that history.” To remove the mastic, he did all sorts of things, including buffing it with a 16-grit copper plate, spraying mastic areas with WD-40, soaking an oily area with paint thinner and more. He also used a few tricks, including water-popping to help remove deep scratches before buffing and alternating worn and new abrasives on the multi-head on the buffer before ending with a final buffing with 120 and coating with four coats of water-based finish. “As far as what it was and how it came out, it looks amazing,” Franklin says.

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