On Tuesday night, we raised the light fixtures and rolled out the floors. We even had a couple of fencers from the Iowa State University Fencing Club come down and help us. It’s finally starting to look like a fencing club! Afterwards we all went to Zombie Burger to celebrate.
This weekend was spent painting! And painting… and painting. We’re getting kind of sick of painting. Fortunately we’re almost done!
Kevin and Mike rented a paint sprayer and painted the ceiling and themselves on Friday night – 5.5 hours of continuous spraying, plus another couple hours for setup and clean up. On Saturday, Sarah, Kevin, Jules’s boys, Jim and longtime fencing friend Yuly did some touch-up work and painted the rest of the floor. On Sunday, RJ did more touch-up painting and poisoned so those black widow nests don’t come back. That night, Kevin went back and did a second coat of floor paint in the part of the room that will not be covered with rubber floors.
In the last week, we’ve finally been able to make some good progress. The rest of the floor mats arrived. One of our fencers from the church basement epee group took care of the drywall work. Several of us painted the non-drywall walls. We attempted to start on the ceiling as well, but the little paint sprayer we borrowed did not work very well. We decided to do some research and regroup, opting to rent a real paint sprayer and knock out the ceiling tomorrow night. In the mean time, we did some testing of floor paint.
There have been a few improvements to the property the last couple weeks, including replacement of the garage door, some drywall work, and addition of a little bit more electrical for us. Some of the work was delayed due to waiting for things to be shipped.
On Monday night we did some paint prep work. Power washing of the floor began today. The rubber flooring has started to arrive, and the rest will be here tomorrow. We hope to finish power washing and start painting the ceiling and walls tomorrow. Thanks to Kevin and Sarah’s friend Amber, who brought her mad sewing and cleaning skills from DC, we’ve also made some good headway on the curtains to cover up the electrical boxes and putting zippers on the old jackets we got from a very generous Colorado club.
RDF plans to begin work on the lower level of 220 E. 3rd St. on Oct. 1. We hope to open for fencing in November.
Here’s what the space looked like in September:
red door fencing 