The existing floor was a festive pancake of concrete, then a quarter inch of neoprene for springiness, then two layers of plywood. After two decades of dancing, the old plywood was extremly torn up, meaning the surface was rough and splotchy and paint would no longer stick to it well. It was a finished surface but a soft wood, probably pine or Douglas fir.
After repairing some soft spots in the old floor, we laid down a new layer of 3/4" birch. That is the same hardwood that we used on the go-go boxes and the Dazzle dance floor, which have held up exceptionally well. It turns out that we didn't need to tear up the old floor first. The new layer is glued and screwed on top of the old floor, which means that you are all now 3/4" taller.
During and after:
We hope to have you dancing on this new floor very soon.
Birch is normally one of the more expensive woods, but as it turns out there's some kind of supply-chain fuckery going on affecting most of the softer woods, so this is currently the least expensive plywood available, because the price of the lower quality stuff has gone through the ceiling!
We're going to paint that gray, like the old floor. We considered staining and varnishing it instead, since we can always paint it later if we need to, but the downside of that is the varnish would make the paint adhere less well. So we're just going to go with paint from the start.
I must say, I am surprised and gratified that my Hail Mary "Wanna buy us a dance floor?" post succeeded. Without these donations, we would have just kept lumbering along with our fairly-scruffy old floor. Thank you again, dear anonymous donors, you are the best!
We do have a few other renovations that we'd love to do if there are any other generous folks out there willing to help...
