Our story so far: The layers of flooring and gunk covering the original wood floors at the old Methodist church were beginning to feel as if they would never end. During the official demo phase we peeled back the old carpeting and padding. We then removed carpet staples and nails covering every square foot of the sanctuary.

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Then there were pieces of tin.

Tyler found dozens of dinky pieces of tin nailed all over the sanctuary floor. Someone had meticulously cut the tin to size, nailed each corner and added nails every two inches when the piece was bigger. He took to removing them, and discovered they covered little divots and other dings in the hardwood. But like the nails and staples, they had to go.

In the back corner of the room, he found a much larger hunk of tin. When he peeled it up, he discovered a time capsule of sorts: Several copies of what appeared to be religious newspapers for young people—Dew Drops and Young People’s Weekly—filled with serialized stories and articles of advice. He was amazed to see they dated to the 1920s.

He developed the back story to this strange find: A teen-age boy—maybe the minister’s son—was tasked with covering the dings in the floor before it was covered with something (tile? carpet?). When he got to the place where there was once perhaps the wood stove smokestack, he stashed a pile of Sunday school newspapers for posterity with the unspoken message, “I was here.”

At this point, we were finally down to the mastic-covered wood, and sanding commenced.

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Tomorrow: It snowed the first day we sanded the floors. That’s how long we’ve been at it. Read about it here.