Refurbishing stage floor

[2mojo2]

We had a situation a lot like yours. The yellow pine flooring upstage of the plaster line was in pretty poor condition from years of heavy traffic. The masonite that had been GLUED and nailed down was worn, torn, and bubbled up from moisture.
We removed the masonite and scraped a way the glue, leaving as much of the pine flooring intact as possible.
Next, a cement based filler ( known in the flooring business as flash patch) was mixed and troweled in place over the whole surface. The object is to fill the voids and low spots, leaving a smooth surface. Do not overfill. Sanding is definitely not recommended.
Since there is a history of high humidity issues in our space, and some of it is dampness rising from below the slab, we applied 30# roofing felt with a few staples.
1/4" tempered masonite was installed with 3/16" spacing between the sheets and screws about 12" on center.
Two coats of exterior flat black latex paint completed the job.

The surface has held up very well for six years. We have not yet replaced a single piece.

Leaving the seams open has been less than ideal. Dust gets under the sheets and can pop up during use.
I think that I will tape the seams before this winter's coat of paint.

I am not altogether happy with the flat paint. It tends to hold dust.
I am going to try a mixture of exterior flat and exterior lustre (approximately a semi-gloss).

I hope this helps.

 

[tcombs]

I don't recommend flat paint for your floor. As was mentioned previously, it gets dusty really fast. We use satin black Breakthrough for our stage floors. Sometimes we'll go to semi-gloss.

 

[Dreadpoet]

how did you screw through masonite and the cement filler without cracking up the hardened filler?

 

[josh88]

You shouldn't so maso directly on the filler, especially if you have any type of dancers ever. Check the wiki for sprung floor (or maybe it will link if I'm lucky) there are usually a few layers underneath or at least some 3/4 ply. Which solves the screwing problem


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[artdeco18]

We have a space that was at one time a church sanctuary and over time the stage has been extended twice. The original deck was hardwood over tongue and groove, one extension used laminate over ply, the last one used 1/4" tempered masonite over 3/4 ply. Some of the the issues we encountered was that the original stage and laminate were simply painted over and tape and heavy set pieces tend to pull up the paint. When the paint cures (especially after multiple coats) it can leave sharp edges on the stage which can be not a lot of fun for actors who may be barefoot. The other issue is with curling of the laminate and an uneven joint where the laminate meets the original floor. The third issue is that hardwood and laminate get messed up when set pieces are screwed to it.

Our solution was to redeck the entire stage with 3/4" sheathing. I thought about using a resilient underlay between the ply and original deck, but worried about it deteriorating over time (particularly in high traffic areas). Instead we opted to only tack the top layer of sheathing so that it would even everything out and would be able to "float" to some degree.

We covered the sheathing with 1/4" tempered masonite which is a little more expensive but more resistant to wear, tear other insults theatre people subject to it. Because we were dealing with 4x8 sheets, care was taken to ensure that the masonite was off centre of the ply. We centred the first row of ply at stage C so that the joint in the maso was at C. The first row of Maso was also 2'. The idea was to keep the maso seams as far away from the plywood seams as possible. Also everything is staggered the same way tiles are so once you've started (assuming you start straight) it all goes together easily.

Tempered masonite lasts a long time but I did remember recovering a stage many years ago that had been screwed and had its seams taped. Getting a robertson screw out after it's slot has been filled with paint is not a lot of fun and I found that the tape really did nothing to hide the seams. My solution was to use an air nailer and 1" Bostich staples to fasten the masonite and leave the seams unfinished. Paint and crud eventually fills the seams anyway and doesn't need to be maintained the way tape does.

One of the disadvantages of the staples is that they sometimes work themselves up. That is an easy fix with a hammer. another advantage of staples is that it makes replacement of individual sheets easy. That is the same reasoning for sheathing as opposed to tongue and groove. It's been my experience that the onstage deck gets a lot more wear and tear and paint (particularly if you allow productions to change the colour of the deck... so when it comes time to redeck you can often get away with simply replacing the sheets you need.