1932 Commercial Space, Vinyl Tile and Adhesive Off

This is a 1932 commercial building on Haywood Road in West Asheville — the space that is soon to be Pho House. What was under the vinyl tile was not obvious when we started: layers of tile over decades of adhesive, over original narrow-strip maple that had been sealed under all of it.

Tile and adhesive come off with the drum sander. We ran the Hummel through the field to get the vinyl tile and the mastic up and back to bare wood, then switched to the Bona PowerDrive planetary sander to flatten and refine. Adhesive is what makes a job like this slow — it loads paper fast, so the sequence is worked in stages rather than pushed through.

There was damage that had to come out. Where the subfloor was exposed and boards were missing, we wove new stock into the existing field and filled the seams, then carried the sanding through the patched areas so the repairs would not stand out once color went down.

The plan called for a dark floor rather than natural wood, so the field went out in ProCoat UnoCoat in Special Walnut. Maple starts pale and tight-grained, so that is a real shift in tone rather than a refresh of the color that was already there. As a hardwax oil it soaks into the wood instead of building a film on top, which suits a commercial space that is going to see heavy traffic — wear reads as patina rather than as a scratched-through finish line, and it can be spot-repaired down the road instead of resanded.

In the finished photograph the boards read as one continuous floor. The patched boards are still there if you go looking for them, but the tile, the adhesive and the holes are gone, and the floor is ready for the restaurant going on top of it.