Had to choose between preserving a 300-year-old floor and modern fire codes

I was helping with a dig in a colonial house in Williamsburg last spring. We found the original wide-plank pine floor under 4 layers of linoleum. The state fire marshal said we had to rip it out for sprinkler access or the building couldn't open to the public. I pushed hard to save it, so we spent 3 weeks carefully lifting every plank and storing them in a climate-controlled shed. The museum director finally agreed to build a raised walkway over the floor instead. Cost an extra $12,000 but the floor is still there. Has anyone else fought this kind of preservation vs. safety battle?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_mary29d ago

@lee733 you make a fair point, and honestly I've tripped over my own feet on flat ground before, so a raised walkway might just be my final boss. But yeah, the floor was in shockingly good shape under all that linoleum, like someone sealed it in a time capsule. The pine was solid but scuffed to hell, which is what you'd want from a 300 year old floor, not museum clean but lived on. And the $12k was a pain, but the walkway is pretty low profile, more like a subtle ramp deal, and the museum director liked it so much she's talking about doing it in other rooms now. I guess the lesson is sometimes you can have the old floor and the sprinklers, just not without creative engineering and a director with deep pockets.

lee73329d ago

Four layers of linoleum though lol. Was the floor actually in good shape under all that or was it rotted? I've seen a lot of "historic" stuff people get weirdly religious about that's really just old junk with bugs in it. $12,000 extra seems like a lot for a walkway when sprinkler access is literally a life safety thing. Hope that floor is worth it if someone trips over a raised walkway and breaks their neck.