As a sole operator, it became extremely challenging for me to do it all so I made the decision to focus on the finishing side of our trade and head towards custom colours and finishes.
This has led to collaborations with some amazing interior designers, suppliers and builders who require custom colours; a high quality of work and an innovative approach to new sanding processes and unique coatings and finishes.
Along the journey, I have been fortunate to work in partnership with the installation talents of Bedri from Parquetry Style. This has allowed me to focus on the finishing side of projects and is a win-win for both of us – as well as our clients as they benefit from two parties who specialise in their own fields. As we organically evolved and have become busier, we are happy to have Steve from Toto Flooring as a valued addition to our team.
Brighton Project
We were referred to this project from one of our builders to try and correct a previously installed floor that did not produce a desired outcome for the client.
The issues began with the way the Russian Oak parquetry was installed. Blocks had been laid over the glue after a skin had formed, resulting in many of the parquetry blocks adhering poorly to the subfloor and moving upon standing. To remedy this issue, the affected blocks were removed, substrate and blocks cleaned ready to be reinstall following correct process.
The next issue we encountered was that some blocks were stuck down too hard, which made their removal without breakage extremely tricky. Others had moving corners creating squeaks as the floor was walked over – which we corrected by drilling small 2mm holes through the parquetry blocks and applying a raising polyurethane glue injection to fill the void and create a solid block ready for sanding.
Additionally, the laser cut edges had not been installed in a straight line so that one end was tight while the other end had up to a 1-2mm gap. This was further compounded by the timber being wet on installation and when the home climate control was activated, the entire floor shrunk 2mm –making some of the gaps 3-4mm around the entire block and over the entire floor.
We made random examination of the environment and moisture content to ensure the flooring had stabilised after 6 months of being down. The residual gaps were filled with almost 60 kilos of timber wood floor filler. This was not watered down, but manually pushed in to ensure the filler penetrated as deeply as possible to achieve greater stability.
Once the floor was stable and ready to sand, I had the issue of colour as the previous company had attempted a white wash in a room upstairs, which had turned the Russian Oak yellow, presumably due to the tannin and oils in the timber itself. With this in mind, we opted to work with our custom colours and create a look that would match the tones in the marble work downstairs. Multiple colours were attempted but everything we tried kept producing a yellow undertone as we were using such light colours. We finally decided to apply a very diluted black stain directly to the timber – almost the colour of dirty water – in an attempt to counteract the yellow note in the timber itself. This allowed us to achieve the final desired tan colour.
Once the stain was complete, a Loba waterborne polyurethane coating was applied with specific amounts of white added into each coat to achieve the final tan colour – being very similar to the natural colour of the timber itself this brought a perfect harmony between the timber and the marble within the home.
Warren / Mrboards
