WOW!!! What a terrible mess! The Dining Room floor that looked so pretty for the 2013-14 season had to be totally re-done!
Nobody seemed to know what happened to it. Probably 50% of the tiles started peeling up over the summer. By the time the volunteers started arriving - MAJOR work had to be done to the floor.
Coffee Area |
Hall Entrance Area |
Table Area |
New Custodian Larry "Cutting Tile" |
Howard finishing the final section |
Sure Cleans up well though!
New custodians Larry and Nancy arrived to find the Dining Room floor a disaster - literally! Then Bernie & Karen showed up to see the same. At that point we were afraid to tell Howard, Sandy, John and Kathy - they might turn around and head back home!
Howard, Sandy, John and Kathy were instrumental in doing last years repairs! If they knew it would be the ENTIRE floor, they may not show up.
Being the dedicated volunteers they are, they arrived and immediately started working on the floor. Larry and Howard had the most difficult job - actually "peeling" up the tiles with a slide hammer type device. The welds kept breaking so we finally got a chisel designed to handle the hammer. What a difference!!
Howard and Larry pushed and vibrated that hammer for days over the entire dining room floor!! Each day brought progress and finally it was all removed. Then the glue had to be removed and the floor sanded to make it all nice and smooth for a new finish!
As the deadline of Oct 31st arrived - it was completed and absolutely beautiful!
Special THANKS to Howard, Larry, John, Sandy, Kathy, Nancy and Karen - incredible job!!
Next on the agenda was the Hobby Room. It is used by various groups and classes and a special event room for the Powwow Show. However, it was in a serious need of a "Clean up and Sprucing Up".
The "crew" started ripping out all the outdated pegboard and redid the walls for a fresh coat of paint. The carpet was pulled up and everything removed for a nice new look!
John got some great paint colors and went to work! Then they redid the floor with the same material as the Dining Room so it really dressed up the look!
Here's John "working" the roller on the floor with the thick epoxy paint and Howard "sprinkling" the dust - we won't say what we called him while he was "a spinklin"!!!
John after he had painted the walls applying the special very thick epoxy paint onto the floor. Howard over to your right "a sprinklin" the floor!! |
The Facelift at QIA is amazing. A great team of volunteers did painting, new floors, updated areas; and, the improvements are spectacular!
It's amazing what can happen when a group of volunteers get together and decide to work as a team and give a new look to the QIA facility.
They tackled pretty much every area.
As you walk in the main entrance doors you'll see a B E A U T I F U L shiny new floor coating on the entire floor of the main ballroom and show room. Wow - what an improvement! Everyone thinks the floor is still "wet" it looks so new! It's fine and all set for shows, dances, Bingo and everything in-between!
The cafeteria area was completely re-painted from floor to ceiling. These volunteers came up with a great "sparkle" looking floor paint that went right over the old floor. However, we should mention that the old floor had to be smoothed over, sanded and completely prepped before it was coated with this special coating. All the walls were painted and it just looks so bright and fresh - all just in time for the opening on Friday November 1, 2014.
The volunteers were so excited with the new look, you couldn't stop them! They redid the bathrooms and even the kitchen floors! Talk about dedication.
A tremendous amount of effort went into the actual prep work for the floors. All the old tiles had to be smoothed over, sanded, filled in where broken or missing and cleaned before that beautiful coating of flooring could be applied - a lot of work!
The offices had the old carpet pulled up and a bright shiny new floor and a fresh coat of paint was added to the walls. You could see the smiles on everyone faces within seconds of seeing the new area.
We tired to get as many people as possible together for a "Faces of the Facelift" picture. We were able to get most. However, we will do our best to get the missing people on here as well.
The list of names of these wonderful volunteers - Bob L, Bob S, Kathy, John, Claudia, Pat, Charlie, Harry, Howard, Sandy, Aleen, Mike, Ray, Virginia, Randy, Ken, Joann, Gil and Erma.
Our apologies if we missed someone. We'll update the list and pictures as soon as possible!