[SML] replacement floor choices

[Duncan Mahoney]

When the floor in our main stage theater was replaced about 15 years ago, the contractor used 5/8" thick MDF as the top surface.  It has held up surprisingly well, we run drywall screws into the floor with wild abandon to hold down scenery, big lag screw holes get plugged with a dowel.  There is some funkiness at the edges of the traps, but that is mainly due to the "tape the seam and paint for 4 shows, peel the tape to open the trap" process that gets repeated once or twice a year

I have ¼" MDF as the top layer of the floor in one of the black box spaces, it bubbles much less than Masonite or hardboard, but it still bubbles.  The plan is to replace it with ½" MDF, which we've used in classrooms and another black box with success

One black box theater has resilient PVC tiles over a concrete slab, which I don't fully recommend.  It took buffing with a commercial floor buffer equipped with a wire brush before Rosco Tough Prime would stick to the surface, and then it took 6-8 more layers of paint before spike tape would not peel all the paint off beneath it when removed.  OTOH the holes we drill through the tiles to secure the scenery into the concrete don't show from a distance....

Duncan Mahoney
Head of Technical Direction
Associate Professor of Theatre Practice
University of Southern California School of Dramatic Arts

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