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VENDOR TEAM 3M Disposable dust masks 3M Center Building 42-6E-37 St. Paul, MN 55144 (800) 364-3577 www.3m.com DUR-A-FLEX Coatings 95 Goodwin Street East Hartford, CT 06108 (800) 253-3539 www.dur-a-flex.com LUCO MOP COMPANY Squeegees and rollers 3345 Morganford Road St. Louis, MO 63116 (800) 522-5826 www.lucomop.com METABO USA Surface prep equipment P.O. Box 2287 1231 Wilson Drive West Chester, PA 19380 (800) 638-2264 www.metabo.us RUWAC Vacuums 54 Winter Street Holyoke, MA 01040 (800) 736-6288 www.ruwac.com SASE COMPANY, INC. Surface prep equipment 26423 79th Ave South Kent, WA 98032 (800) 522-2606 www.sasecompany.com THE WOOSTER BRUSH COMPANY Rollers 604 Madison Avenue P.O. Box 6010 Wooster, OH 44691-6010 (800) 392-7246 www.woosterbrush.com TOPPING IT ALL OFF Once all the flooring had been put in place and sealed, it was time for the top coat application. "Because the resort has literally tens of thousands of feet walking across these floors, they needed a hammer-hard surface that would meet high anti-slip standards." Rader continues, "The top coat could not yellow with age. And it also had to be thin enough to allow the depth of the colors and the shading details on the icons to remain visible." include three or four unique acrylic flake colors in each blend," Rader explains. The buckets of mixed coating were then delivered to crew members on the floor who would pour the mixture out and spread it using 24- and 30-inch notched squeegees from Luco Mop. The crew then backrolled the coating with textured looprollers from Wooster. Once the epoxy had been backrolled, Dur-A-Chip flakes, in the corresponding color, were hand-broadcast into the wet resin. The floor was then allowed to dry overnight (or during the day, as the case may be). When the crew returned for their next shift, the floor had cured. They would begin the shift by grinding off any high spots and vacuuming the floor in preparation for the application of the first epoxy seal coat. If the section of floor included an icon design, such as an eight- foot tall treble clef for the one dining room or a seven-foot diameter baseball for the other, Rader and his crew would follow patterns to install the design using an airbrush or mini spray guns. "We'd then seal the floor with a roller-applied clear coat," Rader states. Using Luco short-nap rollers, the crew would seal the decorated floors with a 10-mil thick application of Dur-A-Glaze Clear. Then it was time to move on to the next 1,300 square feet, and the next color. "Typically, the design guys would come in to work in the late afternoon and do the layout with a chalk line so that the night guys knew where to put the colors." 38 CoatingsPro J January 2009 They decided to use Dur-A-Flex's Armor Top abrasion resis- tant top coat system, with Dur-A-Grip anti-slip aggregate added into the urethane during the mixing process. With low-VOCs and odor, and excellent chemical-, solvent-, stain-, and abrasion- resistance, the Armor Top system met the resort's high traffic demands, as well as the resort's specified high anti-slip coefficient. Furthermore, its light-stable formula would protect the colors and depth of the PremUS crews' finished floors. After slowly mixing the resin, hardener, and anti-slip aggre- gate, the top coat was poured into trays and taken to the floor. There, crew members armed with 18-inch Wooster rollers used the "dip and roll" method to roller-apply the satin-finish top coat onto the coated concrete to create a finished system with a nominal total thickness of 3/16-inch on each floor. "And that was it," Rader says. "We were able to turn the floors back over to the theme park right on schedule." He makes it all sound so easy — almost as if it were a fairy tale ending. The resort's owners got their terrazzo-like floors without breaking their budget or inconveniencing their guests. But we know the truth behind this fairy tale ending. There was no magic, just the reality of two hardworking teams of expert coatings applica- tors working steadily and methodically to finish both floors right on track — in spite of all the intense pre-start delays. And in the coatings world, that truly is a happy ending. CP ABOVE With an 18-year-long relationship with the Florida theme park/resort, Rader and his crew have learned to anticipate the organization's exacting standards. It helps, however, that the crew itself has been together for quite some time and that they share those same high standards, functioning as a cohesive unit with focused precision.