Jefferson Middle Gym Floor Salvage

I spent the last few days at Jefferson Middle School salvaging an old, maple, tongue and groove, gym floor for re-use as counter tops and tables.  We had to rip out baseboard trim boards surrounding the gym and about a quarter of the trim turned out to be beautiful cherry underneath the institutional, light blue paint. After we popped the trim we took skill saws and cut 4 ft by 9ft panels

 

We slid crow bars underneath the 2x4 sleepers and popped the panels with torturous sawzalling of the sleepers that the did not get cut by the skill saw and some heave ho!  There were metal brackets securing the sleepers to the concrete floor and we constantly hit the brackets while skill sawing and sawzalling the panels.  We used more demo skill saw blades in two days of cutting then I have used in my whole life.  After we freed the panels we stacked them outside for a truck to pick up at the end. 

 

Here is a pic of the Windfall Lumber truck picking up stacked panels.  

We left the gym with a concrete floor that had a lot of metal brackets protruding up through.  They are going to install some kind of a safe rubber floor to replace the maple gym floor.  The rubber floor will offer some cushion from a fall, but good luck with the raspberry skin burns.  

 

It was entertaining to see what lived beneath the gym floors and to imagine what it was like when the crew was installing them in 1957.  There was a receipt we found for the tongue and groove flooring that revealed when the floors were put in.  The floor acted as a time capsule that revealed lots of Rainier beer bottle caps, cigarette packs, old matchbooks, a sneak a toke pipe and pork chop bones.  Our crew enjoyed investigating and imagining the party it must have been when they installed the floor back in the fifties.