DIY penny floor bathroom in new cafe in Asheville

Day 1. Self Leveling subfloor

I don't have a before picture of the bathroom which I regret. Really, this was the second step. First I had to remove toilet and the vinyl floor tiles that were there before, scrap any debris of the the plywood and paint a layer of self leveling sub-floor primer. Next I created a wooden frame to prevent spillage into the floor vent and caulked all the edges in the room including the toilet drain. Then I mixed the SLS-F in a 5 gallon bucket using a 1 1/2' drill bit (I would have spent the money on a mixing drill bit if I had to do it again). After that I had 20 min to pour and spread the SLS-F. This was the result.

Day 2. Starting the Design

I was originally inspired by user/otivito(https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1tcmtg/well_i_finally_finished_my_bathroom_floor_of/) I pretty much copied their design.

Immediate mistake

You can see the glue from the pennies I had to scrape up after letting my business partner take over for a few a while. She kept the form of the pattern right but switched the colors. Oops!.. But it really didn't take too long to fix

slow progress

I presorted the pennies to speed things up, but at this point I was still dabbing glue on the back of each penny

4 hours later

It wasn't for another 4 hours of laying pennies after this picture was taken that my other business partner pointed out that I could put a line of glue on the floor and then put the pennies in place. DOH! Of course that was way easier and faster.

The next day my other business partner helping out

Things really started moving along the 3rd day.

Day 5. Almost done!

We finished laying all the pennies on Day 5. Then we re-caulked all the edges and put our epoxy in the room with a space heater to warm it up as several DIY instructions suggested (Epoxy cures best above 75 degrees). This turned out to be a nearly disastrous mistake.

Day 6. Screwing up the final step

I ordered a recommended epoxy online and it came with 5 pages of instructions; small font. In bold, several times, it says to make sure the room and the epoxy are above 75 degrees. What my partner and I failed to read, the one time it was mentioned, was that you are not supposed to heat the hardener agent with the resin. DONT HEAT THE HARDENER! After mixing the warm resin and hardener I began to pour the epoxy and it unleashed a thick noxious gas and started to instantly harden. We stopped pouring and evacuated to vent out the place. 10 minutes later we returned and started peeling off the now hard, but somehow super hot epoxy and saved most of the floor. You can see the pennies that were pulled up along the back wall.

Day 7. Redemption

I woke up Christmas eve to an intense summer thunderstorm and headed back to the shop to repair the disaster from the night before. I scraped up any remaining epoxy and glue and laid some fresh pennies down. Then I reread all the instructions and poured the epoxy right this time.