Day One
The last job to do was to lay the floor made up of 6 x 1/2 timber cut into sections of 2440mm in various divisions. I cut the wood up on Build Day 5 so they could be painted before being set down. We couldn't lay them last week due to restrictions with the space and rigging the lights so John scheduled me in for an hour at 5pm today.
Firstly, the floor took a long time to get into position. After giving the painters strict instructions to not paint over the numbers that help us match the corresponding pieces and put them into sequence, it took us about twenty minutes to just put the planks in the correct order.
The next struggle was finding the centre of the stage, which is offset to the centre of the seating but it made more sense to make sure they were in the middle of the floorcloth. We laid the centre plank which is not in the correct place according to the plan because the courtinerie for the curtains has moved approximately 300mm upstage from the original plan.
We had about fifteen minutes left of alloted time before the stage crew came in to start plotting the lighting.
I was given the drill to make pilot holes through the planks to the floor, and the drill bit wasnt long enough to be effective. Then, the screwdriver was running the heads off the floor before they could be completely flush with the timber. Finding the right screws, the right torque and the right drill bit took a long time and using various processes it took a further two and a half hours to get half of the floor down.
The best crews we found to use were 1 1/4" inch black screws, of which we didnt have many so John made a plan to go to a hardware store in the morning to buy more screws to finish off the job.
It was frustrating that a quick job turned into a three hour long saga... but hey, that's theatre.
Lesson Learned: Have enough screws for the job
22nd November 2011
Day Two
John had been to a hardware store and bought 1 1/2 black dry wall screws which were fantastic. It took less than an hour to lay the other half of the floor but when we finished we realised there was a difference between the amount of floor cloth remaining on either side. this could mean a number a things, such as the centre point we marked wasn't off center or that the gap inbetween the timber was collectively larger on stage left than on stage right.
Lesson Learned: Do the measurements yourself, never rely on someone else's judgement
Lesson Learned: Use matchsticks in between the planks for spacing continuity.
Lesson Learned: Use matchsticks in between the planks for spacing continuity.
There I am, laying the floor!
