18 Fairgrounds Road
Hamilton, NJ 08619
RATS – an unusual name for a restaurant – comes from Mr. Johnson’s penchant for Dickens’ characters. This is an amazing place. In the middle of Hamilton, New Jersey rests a small European Village, which houses the Atlantic Foundation Offices, RATS, an octagonal dance pavilion, and a lake with floating statuary including a gondola from Venice. Not to mention 32 unbelievable oriental rugs and a 5-Star rating for the food.
Like I said earlier, this is where SandFree really got going. It’s also hard to believe how the process has improved since then, because the labor that went into RATS was enormous, so was the number of towels. At this point, the “Wood Zamboni” was still a figment of our imagination and we weren’t even using a wet-vacuum. The guys liked working there because they were spending a lot of time waiting for the phases to dry.
Before
After
RATS has a chestnut floor that came from a local barn – Really spectacular wood with a beautiful patina. This wood is a fantastic background for the rugs. Also, there is a bar – Kabul West – where we made (2) 9 x 12 rug pillows, that each weigh about 200 pounds.. But the most unbelievable part of the floor is in the dance pavilion where you will find walnut inlaid in maple. I still don’t know what was on this floor when we started, but it was a solid reddish brown – you couldn’t see the walnut and you couldn’t see the maple. We were pretty surprised when the floor appeared before our eye.
