On hardwood floors, and covering them

Our store, like most older buildings in Hyde Park, has a beautiful, 80-year-old hardwood floor. It is in pretty good condition. Unfortunately, like many older buildings in Hyde Park, our beautiful hardwood floor is hidden under 80 years of additional flooring that has been installed on top of it.

To be precise, there is a layer of adhesive, a layer of cardboard- or paper-based laminate, a layer of felt, a layer of carpet, and a layer of crappy fake wood laminate tiles on top of the original floor. Removing all of this, and sanding and re-finishing the floor, would take too long and cost too much money for us to do right now, as much as we would like to do it.

However, in the back office there is no crappy fake wood layer, so our hand was forced as health codes prohibit carpet in food establishments. After days of carpet-ripping, water-soaking, and scrape-scrape-scraping till 3am, we are down to the hardwood except in a few tough spots, and we are investigating non-sanding wood refinishing techniques that use an acid to remove the old finish.

If that does not work out, however, we will be forced to lay vinyl tiling over the floor to get it up to code as we cannot afford the money to rent belt sanders, nor the time required to use them. I never thought I would, in my entire life, glue vinyl tiles on top of hardwood floors, but I can see now the circumstances that lead people to commit such horrible crimes against aesthetics. Next thing you know, we will be tearing out near-by buildings to offer free parking to our customers.