Karly McMillanKarly McMillan is a former assistant editor at Hardwood Floors.MoistureWood Basketball Court Survives Three-Month Outdoor TournamentSeptember 25, 2013HistoryVintage Moments: Harry's Herringbone in the White HouseWhen Harry S. Truman became president in 1945, he inherited a world war, a shifting economy and an iconic mansion in dire need of repair ... and new herringbone floors.July 21, 2013Green IssuesDesign Student Makes Paper into WoodMan has been turning wood into paper since 105 A.D.; now a company in the Netherlands is turning paper into wood. NewspaperWood from Vij5 was the brainchild of Mieke Meijer, who developed the material while attending the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003. Meijer's initial project was made from the local newspaper, the Eindhovens Dagblad, which continues to provide Vij5 with misprints and undistributed newspapers to be turned into faux-wood veneers. The newspaper logs are made with solvent-free glues to ensure that NewspaperWood and any milling waste can reenter the paper recycling system. Meijer has been working with Vij5 since 2007 to streamline production and develop new uses for the unique material. Designers have used NewspaperWood veneers for concept car interiors, lamps and furniture, as well as circular pendants made from a single day's newspaper with the date of the upcycled publication imprinted on the edge. While Vij5 is not so bold as to believe NewspaperWood will replace wood-there are no current plans to make "wood" flooring-it does hope the project will encourage others to upcycle and make garbage a little greener. More information on NewspaperWood can be found at vij5.nl/Vij5_KrantHout_EN.html.July 21, 2013DesignWood Area Rug Doesn't Hide Beauty of Wood FloorsIs there a worse feeling than finishing a gorgeous wood floor only to find out the homeowner is going to put a huge area rug over it? A Swiss company offers an area rug even wood floor people can get behind. The Legno-Legno rug from Ruckstuhl is made from real wood slats with polyurethane seams. The rugs can still be rolled up like any other rug, and they offer a hypoallergenic way to accent large floors and protect them from heavy traffic. The rugs are available in a variety of sizes from 9 to 170 square feet for between $103 and $136 per square foot. Legno-Legno rugs are made from birch, oak, wild service tree and walnut. Ruckstuhl's designers have created other out-of-the-box rugs, too, including a silk Oriental rug with an Atari Space Invaders motif. All of their products are made from renewable, recyclable materials.July 21, 2013MoistureGeothermal Wood Sport Court Sits 16 Feet Below High School CourtyardMost wood floor pros are a little wary of installing wood floors below grade, and this wood floor takes that to a whole new level: The 11,000-square-foot ash sports floor was installed 16 feet below grade over solar-powered, geothermal, cast-in heating pipes. The facility is sunk into the courtyard of the Gammel Hellerup school in a suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark. Architect Bjarke Ingels, a Gammel Hellerup alumnus and Wall Street Journal's 2011 Innovator of the Year, designed the complex to be highly functional, efficient and environmentally friendly. Both the interior and exterior serve as gathering places for students, with lots of seating placed on and around the roof. The arched ceiling, which replicates the path of a ball thrown from one end of the court to the other, reduces the height-or depth in this case-of the building overall, reducing the amount of soil that had to be displaced and maintaining the views from the surrounding buildings. The displaced soil was sculpted into outdoor soccer fields that insulate the network of geothermal-heat storage pipes used to heat the underground facility. Skylights around the ceiling's perimeter take advantage of daylight and reduce the amount of energy needed for lighting and heating. The white-pigmented Junckers Unobat 45 sports floor system and the light cross-laminated beams also keep the interior from feeling like a dark basement. All of these details work together to bring a modern, earth-conscious sensibility to the 119-year-old school.July 21, 2013ReclaimedReclaimed Wood Floors Add Beauty to Ultra-Green HomeWhen discussing green building, cities such as San Francisco or Portland come to mind, but the town of Norris, Tenn., a bedroom community 20 miles north of Knoxville, was a green building leader long before there was a green building movement. Back in the 1930s, the Tennessee Valley Authority built the modern, idealistic garden city to house dam builders and their families. Seventy-five years later, students and faculty from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville sought to bring Norris back to the cutting edge of housing design by incorporating what we now know about carbon footprints, volatile organic compounds and waste reduction into a New Norris House. The culmination of their efforts incorporates everything from rainwater harvesting to wood floors reclaimed from old barns and earned the unusual project a LEED-Platinum certification.Architect: The University of Tennessee-Knoxville College of Architecture and Design (Knoxville, Tenn.) Construction: Clayton Homes (Maryville, Tenn.) General Contractors: University of Tennessee-Knoxville College of Architecture and Design, Clayton Homes, and Johnson & Galyon Construction (Knoxville, Tenn.) Flooring Manufacturer and Contractor: Salvageantique LLC (Stanford, Ky.) Finish Manufacturer: Osmo North America (Seattle)July 21, 2013SafetyVintage Moments: Proper Posture for Wood Floor CleaningIn this photo from the early 1920s, courtesy of the Cornell University Library, Miss Ruth Kellogg demonstrates correct posture for sweeping wood floors.May 27, 2013Green IssuesWood Floor Maker Helps Orchard Clean Up After Natural DisastersDixon's Apple Orchard had a rough year in 2011, starting with a late frost that threatened production at the harvest-time hotspot. That summer, the Las Conchas Fire, which burned more than 150,000 acres in eight days, roared across the property, damaging both the apple trees and the property's pine forest. When the blaze reached the orchard, the forest service and local firefighters called in all area volunteers, including David Old, who is a friend of the orchard's owners and owner of Old Wood LLC. Once the blaze had passed, Old and his crew set to harvesting the burned and hazardous pine trees to use for flooring at the request of the state land office. The smell of the tree sap caramelized by the fire attracted the infamous mountain pine beetles, notorious for killing pine trees in the Rocky Mountain area and leaving a characteristic blue stain in the wood. Then in August, it started to rain. Hard. Without any groundcover to hold it back, rivers of mud tore down the mountain, throwing massive boulders, rerouting rivers, and destroying the one thing the fire hadn't: the orchard owners' home. Old Wood worked through six of these flash floods, watching as more and more logs wound up in the lake at the bottom of the mountain. But something good did come from the natural disasters: The pine logs were brought back to the Old Wood facility and cut into beautiful beetle-kill-blue, end grain tiles, which were laid in the Santa Fe Community College student center.May 27, 2013DesignTile Floor Manufacturer Features Petrified Wood LineReclaimed and salvaged wood floors are increasingly popular as homeowners look to reduce, reuse and recycle. One tile manufacturer has taken salvaged wood to the next level: using trees that fell millions of years ago. Ann Sacks, a division of Kohler Interiors, sells a variety of tiles made from petrified wood, sourced from fossilized forests in the United States, Brazil, China, India, Egypt and South Africa. The tiles, with distinct grain patterns, are no longer wood at all-minerals replaced the organic material, leaving quartz, colored by iron, carbon and manganese, in the pattern of the grain-that-was. The unique nature of these tiles is important to remember when you see the price tag: $222.30 per square foot. For more, see www.annsacks.com.May 27, 2013Extraordinary FloorsWood Floor of the Year Legend Opens New Showroom in BerlinMay 27, 2013Previous PagePage 2 of 3Next PageTop StoriesDesignCraftsmanship Across the Globe: Introducing the Winners of the 2024 WFB Design AwardsHailing everywhere from Italy to Portugal to Cincinnati to Washington, D.C., to Brazil to Chicago (by way of Poland), the recipients of this year’s WFB Design Awards prove, through sweat and creativity, that true craftsmanship has no borders.Machines/ToolsMeet the Repairman Turning Edgers Into ArtworkContractingWhat’s Your Top Advice for When Things Get Slow?DesignWhite Oak vs. Red Oak: As Pressure Increases on White Oak, Red Oak Is a Versatile AlternativeSponsor ContentRecognizing Retail Excellence: Enter the 2024 WFB Outstanding Retailer Awards
