Saturday Morning

 It rained early yesterday. I didn't bring any gardening tools with me to the dojo, and that worked out fine. Let me briefly explain. Walk in the front door, and there is the "customer" area. Remember, this was a plumbing store before. Customers would walk in, step up to the counter, and order parts. I'm conservatively guessing that this area is between 15 and 20 feet in each direction. I'm not sure what the plans are for this space. There is a door off to the left that leads into a smallish 10' by 10' room, or maybe a bit larger. There is some furniture there now, as well as a refrigerator filled with lots of beer. No, I didn't drink at all. Nobody did. It was too early.
There is a hallway that runs down the center of the building with the customer area on the right, and the room on the left. That hall goes past the two rooms - one on each side - where I pulled out the baseboards. Beyond that is an open area that we will use for our practice. Around the corner to the left is a bathroom. It shares a common wall with the room that holds the refrigerator. Some of us were talking and we weren't sure that this new space isn't much different in size from where we practice now. Maybe it's an illusion. Maybe we'll be able to get in a lot more mats than we have now. We'll see.
My first job was to remove the baseboards from two small rooms that will be right off the practice area. We don't know if we're going to keep these as changing rooms, or demolish them and build changing rooms somewhere else. So I carefully removed the baseboards and pounded out the nails so we could use them again. I noticed that the baseboards from opposite walls were different lengths. I guess they didn't care much if the rooms were square. My second job was to measure the slope of the floor using a laser level and a tape measure. That required a lot of crawling around on the dirty concrete floor.
We also decided on a floor. On top of the concrete we'll arrange 6" x 6" x 3" (or 4") blocks of foam about one foot apart arranged in offset rows. On top of that will go 1/2 inch sheets of 4' X 8' OSB (oriented strand board). On top of that will go a rubber-like material that comes in large rolls about 3' across. On top of that goes the Pergo-like flooring (Sensei decided on bamboo - it looks terrific). On top of that will go our mats. The mats will roll up, so other groups, such as dance, exercise, or yoga, could potentially use our space.
We put together a sample that was about 8' by 8' of all the underlayment, with one box, about 4' x 8', of the snap together flooring on top. We walked on it. We danced on it. We jumped on it. It looked like it moved up and down under our feet too much, but it never felt too soft. We put a practice mat on top of that. Then we fell on it. We threw each other on to it. We bounced a bowling ball off it. Our worry was that something would break the Pergo-like bamboo floor underneath, but it held together beautifully.
Sensei also had a natural cedar privacy fence installed around the back yard perimeter, with a large two-piece gate at the driveway. The driveway enters from the side street, and runs behind one building before entering the dojo property. Now that the fence is up, I can see the back area is much larget than I first thought. We should have enough space for a workout area, and the Japanese garden he wants. There is also a garage(?) back there. Maybe it's a very large tool shed. I'm not sure, but Sensei wants to keep it erect, but change it somehow so it's more like a gazebo or something: Open walls, cinderblock posts at the corners, with the asphalt shingle roof overhead.
It's going to take a long time to get the dojo ready, but it's going to be worth it.