18,000 sq ft Floor Renovation – Concrete Polishing (Fridley, MN)

Concrete Polishing - Minnesota

Division: General Contractor / Concrete Division Customer: The Salvation Army  Location: Fridley, MN  Project Scope: Assist the Salvation Army in remodeling their existing 20,000 sq ft retail store located in Fridley, MN. The goal of this project is to add a fresh new look and design to the store.  Who is the Salvation Army?  The Salvation Army (https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/), an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church. Its message is based on the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of God. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination. One way that the Salvation Army ministers to the people, is through their stores. These stores receive donations and then sell the products to the public at discounted pricing. The goods that are donated and the money spent in Salvation Army Stores fund programs that heal broken lives (Learn more here: https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/combat-addiction/). There are more than 30 stores in Minnesota and North Dakota, where you can shop for new and gently-used merchandise that can purchase knowing that you are making a difference.  The Project: BEFORE  The Salvation Army store design is fairly basic with an open floor plan. This is perfect for the low-cost/low maintenance operation that they run. Prior to our construction project, the store had two types of flooring in the retail space: Vinyl Composition Tile and Carpet. A majority of the retail space was operating on the same Vinyl Composition Tile (VCT) flooring that Randahl Construction, Inc. originally installed over 20 years ago. The building tenant at that time when the original VCT flooring was first installed was Irwin Jacobs a.k.a Jacobs Trading Company. The VCT flooring that was installed, obviously did its purpose, lasting over 20 years, but over the years it slowly started to loose it's ascetics. One of the benefits of VCT flooring is that it can be easily repaired if damage occurs. You simply scrape up the old tile and re-glue a new piece down in its place. The issue happens when the VCT tile gets out dated and finding the match becomes difficult. Typically people settle for a "close" tile but it still looks different and stands out. (see images below).  The carpet in the building was in fair condition and covered a large portion in the middle of the store. This area was a very high traffic area in the clothing section. Carpet offers a great solution for retail clothing and a comfy feel but can also take quite a beating in high traffic areas such as this. 

THE CONSTRUCTION PLAN

Remove all of the old flooring (VCT tile and Carpet) and polish the concrete floors to a level 2 shine, along with adding new LED lighting throughout the space. Standard black industrial base will also be installed along all of the outside walls. Complimenting the new construction will be a revised store layout to better serve the customers.  Construction Scheduling: The project time frame was set at 3 Weeks. Being a retail store, Randahl Construction and The Salvation Army needed to plan the store down time very carefully knowing that every down day is costing money. The Salvation Army set the Re-Open date to Labor Day, September 3rd, 2018 so Randahl Construction needed to plan accordingly.  THE CONSTRUCTION Demolition: The store closed on a Friday night giving the Salvation Army team the full weekend to dissemble their store. The following Monday morning, the Randahl Construction demolition team came in and went to work. Within the first two days using a riding floor scraper our team was able to scrape and clean up 25% of the store floor. This allowed the concrete polishing team to come in and begin polishing that portion or the store. As the polishers started the first portion, the demolition team continued on and scraped up the remaining 75% of the store floor by weeks end. It took only 5 days to completely remove, clean and prep the 20,000 sq ft area of VCT tile and carpet, including the glue.   Concrete Polishing: Anytime you pull up old flooring, you really never know what you are going to find. This project fortunately went very smooth after we pulled the flooring. We removed all of the carpet and VCT tile with very little residue left on the floor. The first polishing machine that we brought onto the job simply grinded all of the left over residue off and prepped the floor for the deeper polishes. This step is very important because you want to make  sure that you get all of the residue off of the concrete floor. This is also one of the slower moving machines. The video below was shot in real time, so you can see how slow these machines actually go and how well they clean the floor. Polishing machine #2 came in after the first machine moved on to the second section of the store. This polishing machine is the first machine where you can really start seeing what the floors were going to bring out. One of our most favorite parts of these projects is the moment that we start seeing what the polished concrete is going to look like. The designs of concrete can change from pour to pour so its always a surprise.  Due to the pressure of getting this project completed on time, we brought a 3rd and 4th machine onto the job site to work simultaneously with the other machines pushing the project forward with out loosing the quality. Once the 1st and slowest machine finally finished we strategically got the other machines polishing the floors to the final #2 finished. Looking for more information on How to Polish Concrete check out this page: HOW TO POLISH CONCRETE

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