CAN I SAVE THIS FLOOR?

[kkvdesign]

Hi all! I have a floor that is a complete disaster, and I’m looking to the collective wisdom here for some help. It’s a very deep navy/black with white UV lining. There’s a ton of sword fighting, weapon-dropping, shoe scuffing action, so I used the Pro Poly/Zep combo that Heidi Larson recommended on the Black Floors page, applied with an applicator pad. (I even had one of my students use it on the floor for her design first to see how it would hold up under tap dancing, and it worked great.)

However, when I went to seal my floor, it got all kinds of streaky, and now they are complaining that the rehearsal shoes are sliding all over. I don’t really have the option to completely repaint it before tech. I thought I’d try spraying a couple coats of sealer to see if that tones down the streakiness, but if anyone has other/better options, I could sure use them right now. I’m not sure what to do about the slick factor.

Oh, and this is our stage floor, so I have to be able to repaint it back to black when the show is over.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Former Member Content Archive]

You can try to mop it with a little coke in water. That should help with the slickness. That is a trick a mentor of mine told me many years ago. Best of luck!

[AHOGAN]

YIKES! Streaky slick floor!

First regarding the slickness… MY professional life and self esteem got a big jump up when I realized that solving the slickness challenge was not just my responsibility. Costumes should be involved in the conversation so that they can offer to add dance rubber or to sand leather soles, or something. Our costume colleagues are problem solvers too. Let me repeat… This is not just your problem. Please get your production manager involved to help back you up on this.

Mopping coke is a solution…. no one really has THE recipe for coking a floor- it is trial and error- the dance department here puts one can of coke in about 1 gallon of water.

I try to avoid that because it is such a wild card… do you coke the stage , then strip it with hot water then coke it again before the next show? Are people and costumes making contact with the coked surface? Ants???? Yuck I advise against it unless it is somekind of emergency.

There is the liquid Rosin “slip no more”https://www.stagestep.com/product/slip-nomor-2000c/ that I think takes a lot of care and thought to use… do a lot of research before you go down that path.

For streakiness, I have had luck (I haven’t tried it with your particular sealer) with thinning the sealer, and applying a final coat with a finish mop (over your streaky coat). That has helped to even everything out for me. For maintenance on shows that run for several weeks, I go in once a week and scrub the floor with a green or blue pad and get shoe marks up, then mop the thinned out sealer on again.

I wish I could help more. I have been in your shoes. Remember the title of the show isn’t “Perfectly beautiful streak-free floor”

Abby Hogan

PCPA

[kkvdesign]

Thanks for the responses–especially the reminder that it’s not ALL about the floor! We did get grippers on shoes which seemed to solve most of the slipping problems. Spraying a second coat helped with the streakiness, but I will definitely experiment with the thinned sealer/mop technique. Thanks again all!

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