It's a sure bet that a big machine is always running in the Big Apple. One company that has its finger on the flooring pulse of America's largest city is Bronx, N.Y.-based New Wood Co., where president Peter Downs battles traffic, designers' egos, doormen and walk-up apartments to put quality flooring in some of the swankiest spots in town. Hardwood Floors spent a day with Downs last May to see how he manages his business and how New Wood has become one of the better known wood flooring companies in the city.
5 a.m.
Downs awakes and goes for a run around the reservoir in Central Park, just blocks from his Upper West Side apartment.
6:30 a.m.
Downs drives his truck to his Bronx warehouse. "One of my designer friends has 'warehouse envy,'" Downs says of how New Yorkers appreciate anything vintage and how his warehouse is just on the outskirts of a less-popular area of the city.
6:50 a.m.
Downs prepares the schedule for his crews. "Sometimes it's like writing a novel," he says. He has to organize who will work on which project, what they will be doing, how much time they have, and any other pertinent information. Downs also has to prepare the driver's schedule. He decided a couple of years ago that it was easier to have one worker drive the company truck to each site for various tasks rather than having the guys park at the job sites. "It used to be you could just double-park anywhere, but when [Rudy] Giuliani became mayor, they really started cracking down and we would get about $6,000 a year in parking tickets," Downs recalls. "Now we get about a third of that!" So he carefully tries to coordinate the driver's pickups and dropoffs of workers and supplies.
7 a.m.
In the warehouse, Downs helps Richie Lopez, who runs the shop during the day, get the truck ready for a crew starting a new job. He talks with James Doherty, nicknamed "Doc," about his plans for the day. Doc is the head supervisor who spends a lot of time prepping crews and organizing machines and materials. He also helps crews in the field with the more-difficult installation and sanding techniques. Today, Downs has nine guys sanding and finishing and seven guys installing flooring in the field.
7:45 a.m.
Downs starts the paperwork that consumes most of his days. He checks a message he received Saturday from his crew who were supposed to have a job completed last week. Downs told the GC the crew needed two days to sand and finish, but the site wasn't ready until Friday, and the GC wanted the guys to work during the weekend. They started sanding, but a neighbor stormed in, citing a city ordinance against loud construction on the weekends, called the cops and had the crew kicked off the project. So now the job will be done behind schedule, but there is nothing Downs can do about it.
8:15 a.m.
At the Manhattan showroom, Downs reviews flooring options with Mark Skinner and Aimee Morris of Skinner Interiors.
Downs says a noisy Monday on the phone usually isn't a good one, because it's typically homeowners who had the weekend to search for flaws in their flooring, but this morning things are pretty quiet. Despite recent economic challenges for most of the country, Manhattan seems to be a bubble immune to the construction slowdown. Occasionally, Downs will have to have some guys stay home, but when he does, he keeps his workers on a rotating schedule so no one person is missing too much work, and he also keeps in mind who has families to support or other financial obligations.
8:30 a.m.
Downs calls his crew who are installing flooring in a home in the Hamptons, two hours from Manhattan. "I try to choose more responsible people for those jobs so I don't have to check in as often," Downs says. He started his business 26 years ago as a one-man operation after graduating from college with a liberal arts degree. He knew he didn't want to go to grad school or find a job where he had to put on a tie every day, and he accidentally fell into flooring when a friend was renovating an apartment. Downs rented some equipment to sand the floor, some neighbors saw him sanding, and his business grew job-byjob. Even though Downs started his business as the sole man of the operation, he's rarely in the field these days, instead spending most of his time answering up to 200 phone calls and e-mails each day concerning his jobs. "So many of my guys are self-managing and know a lot more than I do," Downs says, even though he admits he would love to be in the field more in order to supervise better and to make more contact with clients. However, he hasn't been able to find anyone who can handle the office tasks as well as he can.
8:45 a.m.
Downs is a little concerned that his new estimator, Gerry McGuinness, who was supposed to return from vacation in Italy today, hasn't shown up yet. McGuinness worked for Downs in the field for 14 years as an installer but Downs moved him up recently to replace an estimator who left the company. "It takes a lot of training to get the language for proposals right," Downs says, but he's confident McGuinness has the knowledge to become a successful estimator. Lopez mentions how he saw on the news that many overseas flights into LaGuardia and Kennedy were being delayed and that McGuinness is probably caught up somewhere. Lopez also mentions that there will be demonstrations Wednesday at five locations throughout the city that will likely shut down traffic. The demonstrations are in protest of the "not guilty" verdict for three New York City police officers who shot and killed an unarmed AfricanAmerican man early in the morning on his wedding day. Downs suggests getting the word out to the crews that they'll have to take the subway to the job sites, and says they'll have to find alternate routes for the driver to get materials to the jobs.
9 a.m.
A GC calls and asks for a break on one of the flooring jobs, from $69,000 to $60,000. Since Downs does about 85 percent of his work directly for GCs, he likes to help them out when he can, even though they tend to put him under phenomenal time constraints. "Some contractors are given a year for their projects, but they save maybe a week for the floor finishing," Downs says. "Or there are even some buildings that allow construction only during the summer, so you have to squeeze 12 months of work into three." Downs pulls out his paperwork and looks for places to "trim the fat."
9:15 a.m.
Downs battles the notorious Manhattan traffic.
Downs is writing an estimate for one of his GCs. He prefers to hand-write it, then give it to his office manager, Aida Padilla, to type up for him to proof. Downs has a sliding scale for pricing, based mainly on how intricate or difficult the project is. The price may also go up if Downs has previously worked with the designers and found them to be difficult.
9:55 a.m.
Downs realizes he's a little behind from having his estimator out last week, so he calls one of his guys in the field and lets him know he forgot to order the wood for a project planned for today, and that they haven't even finished a proposal for the GC yet. He has the employee work on a different project that they do have the materials for. New Wood has a good reputation in New York and is often called in to do a cleanup job when contractors try to keep a project cheap and another floor company does a poor job. Designers in particular ask for New Wood by name.
He has a long list of celebrity clients, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, David Bowie, Lauren Bacall, John F. Kennedy Jr., and more.
10:15 a.m.
Downs' estimator obviously won't be in today, so Downs goes through McGuinness' scheduled appointments to cancel. He speaks with one client who he remembers was one of his first jobs, "When New York felt like a smaller town," Downs says. The city has grown but it remains the perpetual melting pot, according to Downs, who points to his team, made up of workers of Peruvian, Irish, Jamaican, Puerto Rican and Haitian descent.
10:50 a.m.
Downs checks in on a Fifth Avenue finishing job in progress.
An anxious designer who already called a couple of times earlier this morning calls again, worrying if her floor will be done in time for the homeowners to move in. Downs tries to explain the finer points of finishing a wood floor, and how important it will be to protect the finish. The client isn't concerned about that and is mainly worried about getting the homeowners in. "I think the industry must be the most difficult in New York City because everyone is so intense," Downs says. "Everyone wants it yesterday."
11 a.m.
Downs schedules a faux wood painter to do some touch up work. He says having someone come in specifically for touch-ups was one of the best discoveries for him. He used to have Doc do all the touch-ups, but that took a lot of time from his supervisory work.
11:35 a.m.
Downs drives to his showroom on the corner of 72 nd and Broadway. He has one of his employees, Carlos Montesinos, stay in the truck because he typically can't find parking and doesn't want to risk any tickets. Downs says the only reason he's able to get a showroom in such a great location is because he splits it with other tradesmen. There's someone in cabinetry, one in ceiling painting and one in lighting, but he thinks his use of the floors really dominates the space and that he's getting a better deal than everyone else. At the showroom, Downs discusses several flooring options with two people from Skinner Associates who are acting as homeowner representatives. They are looking for something very simple and don't want too many options, which might confuse the homeowners. However, they are drawn to many examples in Downs' showroom, including the end-grain and the sapele. Downs promises to have samples of the more traditional oak and maple made for them to show their clients.
Noon
Downs takes a look at plans at the site office for an Upper East Side townhouse project.
Downs stops by his apartment building in the West 80s, where he's done a great deal of restoration work. This area used to be run down, but the landlord, who is a client of Downs', started buying up buildings and renovating them— a trend most of the neighborhood followed. Because they were friends, the landlord eventually offered Downs a cheap apartment in the building, which was serendipitous, considering Downs' family was fast outgrowing their old one-bedroom apartment. The catch was, Downs had to restore it. So it was a labor of love and a lot of money, but it paid off in a great apartment with a great location.
12:30 p.m.
Downs walks down the street to a small Italian bistro for lunch. One of the many advantages to living in the city is the abundance of great dining.
1:35 p.m.
While Montesinos watches the truck, Downs stops at a bank to make some deposits and cash a petty cash check.
2 p.m.
Downs finds a parking space for his truck. He takes the service entrance to check on a long-term project on Park Avenue and meet with the GC. New Wood is installing 8,000 square feet of antique 6-inch white oak plank reclaimed from old beams. The homeowners had specified they didn't want the boards to look too rustic; they wanted more of a refined, antique look that required many hours of hand-selecting boards. As with most new construction projects, New Wood is working around other trades, so the flooring is being installed in segments. The homeowners hired Kurt Hansen of H and K Hansen Floors of New Jersey to hand-scrape all 8,000 feet with a technique he learned from his father. Kurt plans to scrape 200 feet a day and anticipates the project will take him all summer to complete. "And then afterward, they'll probably throw a rug over all his work," Downs jokes.
2:30 p.m.
Downs' crew examines a stained floor for bleedback.
Downs gets stuck in early afternoon traffic on his way to another residential job where he wanted to double-check that the elevator was indeed too small to transport his 12-foot-long, specially ordered flooring. Since he can see that all of Park Avenue and 5 th Avenue are congested, he decides to put that task off until a better time tomorrow, and instead travels down a side street to check on his guys installing new flooring in an old carriage house. At the turn of the century, when the Vanderbuilts and other noteworthy families were building mansions on Park Avenue, they built nearby carriage houses. What once housed horses are now hot commodities for people looking to renovate housing in Manhattan.
3:05 p.m.
Downs checks in with Moliere "Moe" Barthelemy, who is putting down poly in a large apartment downtown. He then calls the GC in charge of the job that his guys got kicked off of. They try to figure out the best time for the crew to come in to finish the job.
3:12 p.m.
Downs double-parks his truck to run into a coffee shop. Montesinos is there to watch it, and he gets nervous when a police car pulls up behind the truck. The cops move on, and Montesinos breathes a sigh of relief.
3:35 p.m.
Downs heads back to his office in the Bronx. Even in the warehouse district, it's hard to find parking. Once inside, Downs starts working on a price estimate for a GC who demanded an immediate proposal. The GC said he only has a few thousand for flooring, but the project designer requested New Wood and wants only the best herringbone with six coats of finish. Downs looks over the plans for the project and laughs because the designer uses an obscure French term that really just means "herringbone." "After 26 years in hardwood flooring, it's funny to hear some of the things people call different patterns," Downs says. He is going to try to appease both the designer's plan and the GC's price, but in the end, he has to make sure his own business is taken care of.
4 p.m.
Back at the office, Downs reviews the next day's schedule with Moliere
Miguel Velez drives the delivery truck in, and he and Lopez start unloading and going through the rags. Downs had a close call last week when some stain rags were put into the regular garbage and ignited. Now the shop has steel disposal cans, and someone has to go through all the rags picked up from the job immediately and make sure they're disposed of properly. There have even been times, Downs says, that rags have only been in the back of the truck a couple of hours before they got too hot to even touch. And Downs is no stranger to fire emergencies. About 13 years ago, he owned a flooring supply shop, the Floor Store, in addition to his contracting company. One night, he got a call from the fire department and, expecting it to be a false alarm, he saw that the store was nearly burnt to the ground. It took him about a month to clean up the disaster, which turned out to be caused by faulty wiring. Even though it was devastating, the fire did bring some positive things to his life. For one, Downs decided to put all of his time and energy into his contracting business because he was trying to do too much with both the Floor Store and the contracting business. Secondly, he took a vacation to recuperate from the fire and ended up meeting his wife.
4:30 p.m.
Downs is in the office wrapping up some paperwork and e-mails when a man comes to the door selling a new type of sandpaper. Downs has Doc talk with the man and gather a few samples. After talking about it and looking at the product, Downs and Doc decide they'll probably stay with their traditional sanding belts.
5:30 p.m.
Downs goes over the crew schedule for tomorrow and goes through the mail. He calls his wife to ask her to take their son to his guitar lessons. He usually makes it a point to get out early on Mondays, but it looks like he still has a lot of catching up to do, so he'll be in the office a while.
6:30 p.m.
Downs closes shop and heads home for the night.
