.Of course, you can't install a floor like that every day. (Takes at least two days - haha) The following photo is a recent install of prefinished, plainsawn engineered white oak in European width, length, and thickness that the customer acquired in a special-case situation. Among other interesting quirks on this remodel job, we needed to form each plank to meet the existing curved marble staircase and trim.
Our usual standard is to leave no crack wide enough to fit a business card into, and we did that throughout these curves, of course also without chipping the marble. When other trades have already made expensive investments, the flooring contractor must be able to first do no harm, and not every contractor is up to the job.
Following is an example of a homeowner's nightmare. The existing 4" wide solid cherry floor was a major investment when new, and was still in pretty good shape, but had 30 years of wear and tear from being lived in. The refinishing contractor who came before us had great reviews on websites and the homeowner checked references, all of which spoke highly of his work. But when it came time to perform, here's what he did to the floor:
The glare on the floor made it difficult to fully capture the extent of the damage, but all of those ripples you see in the floor were deep gouges left by incompetent drum sanding. In the lower portion of the photo you can see where, at this stage in our sanding process, the sander took the high spots off, leaving finish in the valleys created by poor quality work. Then, to add insult to injury, the finish was larded with heavy drips and smears characteristic of someone unaccustomed to using floor finishing equipment - it's not the same as painting a wall! (To be fair, it would be nearly impossible to make the finish look good when dips in the floor leave deep pools of liquid finish. But that's another story.)
The point here is that, whatever you already have invested in your existing hardwood floor, that investment could be lost entirely to inexpert sanding and finishing. If your contractor gets it wrong, the consequences can be bigger than just another sand and refinish, it can be the cost of removing the ruined flooring and completely replacing it. We calculated that this cherry would have been at least $10,000 in material alone, to say nothing of the labor to remove and replace, only to get back to where you were: needing a floor finish. Fortunately, we were able to save the floor and refinish it to flat and beautiful condition:
Endgrain floors are a great way to have an unusual appearance and they're highly durable. Many early roads in Chicago and other cities were build with endgrain wood and lasted for years of wear and tear outdoors. Following is a winecellar with square endgrain blocks.
Endgrain need not be square. This design by Chuck Crispin of Legendary Hardwood Floors is called "Ellipse." Installed by Kevin Zobott.
Here, Jordan is installing a 3000 sf white oak engineered floor in a private home.
This is a Brazilian cherry floor we managed to pull back into beauty from a condition of rough use. Can you see the two places where we patched in new pieces? Neither can anyone else!
Here you can see us laying the first rows of a glue-down over concrete. The glue we use also acts as a vapor barrier to block the seepage that comes through a slab floor. Getting the first rows dead straight is absolutely crucial to the rest of the floor, since a small angle or curve will be amplified as more of the floor is installed.
No comments:
Post a Comment