The Raymond Town Office will be closed starting Friday, Sept. 11, for a floor-refinishing project that is expected to take four days.

Although the building located on Route 85 has been undergoing periodic renovations since the spring in order to provide more space in the front office for administrative staff, the town office has stayed open virtually the entire time, according to Town Clerk Sue Look.

The only times it has been necessary to close the office is when the contractors have re-finished sections of the office’s 100-year-old hardwood floors. The town office closed for a four-day weekend in early June. In order to avoid fume inhalation, the office will close on Friday, Sept. 11, and re-open on Tuesday, Sept. 14, Look said. The office is typically closed on Mondays.

“For the rest of construction we stayed open, nail guns and all,” Look said. “We’ll have a four-day weekend instead of a three-day, which is what we normally have. It just takes that extra day for the urethane to cure enough and the fumes to dissipate enough so we could be back in here.”

Contractors have already built a new 16-by-31-foot office space in a previously empty section of the front office.

“At one point in time it was where the selectmen held their meetings,” Look said. “More recently it was where he had lunch, and it was just a big open wasted space.”

Now, the front room consists of a hallway with two office spaces on either side, which feature one sit-down and three stand-up counter spaces. The town’s three assistant clerks have moved into the new office space, and the town’s finance director will soon move into the old office space. The finance director’s office, meanwhile, is scheduled for conversion into a break room for town staff.

“The last step will be to take the wall down between the finance director’s office and the kitchen and set it up as a breakroom,” Look said.

Look said she expects the work on the new breakroom to occur in early October.