The Penny Floor, Part Three: The Last Stretch

This is part three of building the penny floor of our caboose, The Boise Jewell, where we finally finish laying the pennies in the bathroom.

This video shows us knocking out the final quarter of the floor. I spent more time per square foot here than on the previous sections, thinking through design elements and placing specially selected coins. The toilet will sit in this area, so that drove some of the design. I also added several boxes around it: one box holds $1.00 in dimes, and the others hold the "dirtiest" pennies in our collection.

For the final stretch, I set it up so I could work from the wall into the center of the room. That was risky, since the tiny gaps between pennies add up and leave the rows misaligned by the time they meet in the center. I planned it so that where the pennies needed more room, I could overlap them under the toilet.

As Janae and I built and talked, we decided we love the hand-built look of this floor and chose to lean into it. Many of the floors we've seen look perfect and symmetrical, like tile made in a factory. We left the laser level, protractor and other precision tools in the shop and eyeballed it the way someone would have in the old days. The touches we appreciate are the ones where we can tell someone built them for us, and that's what we're going for here. We're working toward a craftsman, artistic feel, and you'll see more of it in the caboose's exposed copper plumbing and electrical touches in future editions.

Back on the floor, I learned a few things about my own comfort:

• Socks beat both shoes and bare feet. Shoes were bulky and hard to fold under my legs at floor level. Barefoot, the pennies pressed creases into my skin. Socks were the happy medium, and I set the last pennies in them.
• Shorts beat jeans. In the first session, the creases in the denim left sore, chafed spots on the backs of my knees.
• A pad on the floor beats knee pads. It let me shift and change positions far more easily.

Next comes the epoxy. We hope to pour it this week to seal the floor before the Halloween launch party on October 31st.

• penny floor
• the boise jewell

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