Floors Down in Retail Area

I have had so many people ask me if my store is ready.  Alas, it is taking much longer than I had hoped.  I am working everyday and, although it's progressing, there is still so much to do.  I will need to take stock and price my items and display them.  I have boxes and boxes of items I made in my last workshop and moved here.  I will need to organize all of that before I can even think of opening the store part of this building.

On to what I've been doing.  The walls (see how I made them here) were painted with Benjamin Moore's Simply White, in eggshell.  Getting paint between the boards I put up was quite the exercise.  I used a very small artists paint brush along with the regular paint brush I used to hand brush all the walls.  I tried using a roller, but too much of it got into the "cracks," so I switched to the brush.  It took many hours to paint, using the fine brush to get any blobs from between the boards. I did a second thin coat with the roller.  If I had to do it again, I would not just prime the boards but also paint the two finish coats of eggshell and paint the walls behind first.  (My walls were a light yellow that showed through the cracks, although I didn't think it would matter... it did!)

After painting, I started putting down the floors. They are a faux maple laminate that lock together, board by board.

It's not that difficult to do, but when you are alone and running back and forth to the mitre saw in the next room, well... all the up and down on my knees made me further realize that I am not young any more.

I had very little wastage with this flooring. The room was about 9' wide and each piece of board was 4' wide, so I started with two side-by-side (Pieces ONE and TWO) and then the next piece (THREE) was cut to fit. The remaining part of piece three then started the next row, piece FOUR was a full piece and then again I cut piece FIVE to fit.  When you work through a room this way, there are no extra pieces left over.

The main part of the room was very basic, as I said above, around the stairs and the angled wall was a little more tricky, but not so bad.  I enjoy work like this, most likely due to my mathematical mind.

After finishing the floor, I had to put in baseboards.  I had both the old baseboards from this area and some extra pieces from another room that were torn out when I took down some walls.  I primed them and used two coats of Simply White in semi-gloss and then cut to fit.  I also painted the window and door trim with the same paint, as well as the door to the workshop area.  It all looks clean and fresh, but I still have to touch up the pin-nail heads and do a little bit of caulking.

I had not shown this wall below before, this is to the left when you walk in the front door (the door you see in the photo goes to the workshop).  I am going to have a chalkboard here to be able to write some information about the store as well as greetings, sales, etc.  (More to come on this part.)