Sunrise light on a grove of tufa towers emerging from the water of Mono Lake with soft green and dusty-red wild grasses in the foreground, Canada geese in the shallow water with reflections of the rocky towers, and desert hills in the distance.

Bookstore floor refinishing is well underway

Sunrise light on a grove of tufa towers emerging from the water of Mono Lake with soft green and dusty-red wild grasses in the foreground, Canada geese in the shallow water with reflections of the rocky towers, and desert hills in the distance.

While the Information Center & Bookstore is closed, we thought you might enjoy an update on how the floor refinishing is going.

The purpose of refinishing our floor is both aesthetic and functional. Deep grooves and worn areas were appearing and worsening, which created an eyesore that would have eventually become irreparable, permanently damaging the historic floor if not addressed.

Worn areas of floor were especially visible around the information desk and cash registers. Photo by Lily Pastel.

Naturally, the first step towards restoring our floor was removing all of our displays shelving and merchandise. A big thanks is in order for the awesome Mono Lake Committee staff who helped me relocate our merchandise and shelves to the theater and gallery for storage.

Moving all of our shelves and stock was no small task, involving considerable heavy lifting and the discovery of some serious dust bunnies. Thank you, wonderful coworkers, for your help! Photo by Elin Ljung.

Once everything was removed from the store the sanding began. Local contractor Justin Long has been working for the past week to sand away the old varnish and damaged layers of wood to reveal the lovely wood just beneath the surface.

The floor showing its age—nearly 90 years old!—before sanding began. Photo by Elin Ljung.
The first round of sanding is complete and the floor is already looking greatly improved. Photo by Bartshe Miller.

This coming weekend the floors will be coated in three layers of durable polyurethane finish and allowed to fully dry. After that the baseboards will be installed, and then we’ll move everything back into the bookstore. We expect the Information Center & Bookstore to reopen on Thursday, March 14th at 9:00am.

We hope you’ll stop in to see us and our freshly refinished floor, and we thank you for your patience while we’ve been closed. Between now and the 14th, feel free to call us at (760) 647-6595 or visit our back office for visitor information or an update on Mono Lake.