SWNSA barber has used 70,000 pennies – and a lot of patience – to create an incredibly inventive shop floor.
One pence coins on the floor are usually picked up for good luck, or, left to be trampled on and lost in the dirt.
Rich Holtham, who owns a barber shop in Dudley, West Midlands, called BS4, said he wanted his shop to look a million dollars – or 70,000 pennies, if we’re being specific.
SWNSThe 28-year-old rallied his team and between them, they lined the floor with pennies. That’s 70,000 tiny queens staring up at you – if they didn’t put her face down, of course.
The project saw almost £700 worth of pennies used – just in case you didn’t work that out for yourself – and while it seems like the money could have been spent elsewhere, it does actually make a pretty cool floor.
The project took about a week to complete, with the penny-layers sometimes working up to 12 hours at a time, but Rich seemed happy with the end result.
He explained it actually cost less than the more traditional floor replacement they’d been estimated.
He said:
We wanted a new floor but the cost of getting it done was expensive and we wanted to do something a bit more unusual so we looked at a few different ideas online.
It took us about a week to lay all the pennies down and then we had to get someone to grout the gaps.
The barbershop opening had to be delayed while the workers put the final touches to the floor, but they promised customers it would be ‘worth the wait’.
Posted by BS4 Barbershop – Gornal on Thursday, 29 June 2017
As much as I wish he had, Rich didn’t go around scouring the floors of Britain to collect his coins – instead he went to the bank quite a few times to reach his grand total of 70,000 pennies.
I bet his pockets were heavy!
The owner explained how the floor gained a lot of interested from the public.
SWNSHe said:
We had to take our own cash to the bank and we had to take hundreds of pennies out a day.
In the end we took out £700 worth of pennies, that’s 70,000 coins. We have had a lot of interest in the floor to be fair.
Passersby keep coming into the shop to take a few photos. We have gained a lot of business from it.
The shop itself opened on July 7 and it took us 16 weeks to refurbish the place from scratch.
When all the pennies were in place the shop offered its customers the chance to guess the number of pennies that made up the floor – with the prize of a free haircut to whoever had the closest estimate.
I suppose if you’re going to go to a barbershop, you should go to one that has workers with the patience to lay 70,000 coins on the floor – at least you can be confident they’ll be a perfectionist with your hair.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.