Meet the Winners of the 2025 Ultimate Wood Floor Guy & Gal Contest

Every year the staff of WFB have the unenviable task of carefully reading (and, in some cases, watching) all the entries for our contest that was created to highlight the men and women in the flooring industry who go above and beyond in their craft. Unenviable? Yes, because at the end of that process, we can choose only two pros from the many impassioned and deserving entries.

This year’s Ultimate Wood Floor Guy and Gal come from two sides of the United States and work in very different businesses, but they each represent the grit and determination that comes with working your way up through the ranks on wood flooring job sites.

This year’s recipients will receive a once-in-a-lifetime free trip to Germany, where contest sponsor Lägler will treat them to a tour of their facilities and a full slate of hands-on education during their popular Fly & Sand trip.

Do you know someone who fits the description of an Ultimate Wood Floor Guy or Gal? Are you that pro? Enter the 2026 Wood Floor Guy & Gal contest at bit.ly/uwfgg26enter.

Ultimate Wood Floor Gal: Adriana “Dotty” Vazquez

COMPANY: Awakened Ambition Flooring Co. | Bethlehem, Pa.

YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY: 10

A decade ago, Adriana “Dotty” Vazquez stepped into the wood flooring industry almost by chance when a family wood flooring pro offered her a week’s trial when she needed a job. Initially met with skepticism because she was a young woman entering a male-dominated field, this soon transformed into a revelation of her grit and passion for the trade. She was sick on her very first day, but by showing up with tenacious effort, she immediately proved she was more than up to the task. From that unexpected start came a deep love for the process of transforming wood floors—taking something worn or neglected and turning it into something people are proud to live in.

Over the years, Vazquez refined her craft by working for both small family businesses and larger companies, mastering the tools, embracing the challenges and delighting in the details of wood floors. Now working for her brother at Awakened Ambition Flooring Co., Vazquez is growing her customer service skills by building trust, listening and guiding homeowners to their dream floors.

Through setbacks, steep learning curves and moments when she nearly walked away from the flooring trade, Vazquez kept pushing. She polished her skills, asked questions and embraced every lesson, especially the ones borne of mistakes. Now, with the title of Ultimate Wood Floor Gal, she’s not just celebrating her own achievement—she’s lighting the way for others who might still be doubting whether this industry can be theirs.

WFB spoke with this year’s Ultimate Wood Floor Gal, Dotty Vazquez, about her beginnings, creative achievements, customer stories, and what she believes it takes to become a successful wood flooring pro. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you get started in the wood flooring industry?

Back in 2014, my brother worked for my cousin’s flooring company; he has a company out here in Bethlehem called Jared’s Flooring. I needed a job at the time, and my brother kept telling my cousin, “You should really give her a chance, she’s a hard worker.” And my cousin had the typical man’s response of, “A woman in the flooring industry? I don’t really see it happening.” But he ended up saying, “You know what? I’ll give her a shot.” He took me on for a week and then decided to keep me on because he said I worked harder than a lot of the men he employed. The crazy thing is that my first day on the job with my cousin, I actually got sick, and I worked through it. He was like, “The fact that you’re still trying to get this done even when you aren’t feeling well makes you a trooper.”

So it really started as a fluke, but I ended up loving it and loved seeing the transformation of something so drab to something so beautiful. Being able to transform someone’s whole space by just changing the floors became a passion for me.

What has kept you in the industry for over a decade?

I’ve always grown up doing more artistic things as hobbies. I’m pretty creative. So, being able to do that on a larger scale and give someone something they are going to live in is so gratifying. The floor becomes my canvas.

Is there a favorite floor you’ve done where you’ve been able to showcase your artistic talent?

We did a floor for a very well-known Russian artist who lives out here. He had us sand his floor down, and he drew out a design and had us stain different sections of the floor while he painted other sections. When it was all done and we put the finish on it, and it was so neat to see the transitions between the paint and the stain. Everything just flowed together as if it was meant to be there.

I also really love working with rustic barn wood. With a lot of those floors, you get boards that are all different heights, so you have to sand them all to make them the same height. You have to be very particular because you want to keep the character, but also make a functional floor. I like jobs like that where I have a challenge.

Transforming an entire space by changing the floors has become a passion for Vazquez.

What kind of training did you get at the start of your career?

I did a lot of training on the job. Between my cousin and brother, they helped me hone the basic skills. Then, after three years at my cousin’s company, I went to a bigger flooring company, Lehigh Valley Hardwood Flooring, out here in Allentown. I was with them for a few years, and they had very different machinery. With my cousin’s company, it was very small, so you work with what you got, and you learn how to do things the hard way. Then moving to Lehigh Valley Hardwood was more about learning with the cooler, special tools, like all the neat track saws. I got to hone my craft a little more at that company and learn more from bigger projects because they did bigger homes with more details.

My oldest brother started his own flooring company, so now I work with him, and we do a lot of residential work. Working with him now is awesome because I get to learn more from interacting with customers.

How do you feel about working with customers?

I like being able to get their design ideas. When I worked for the bigger company, the boss helped customers choose the color, but sometimes you finish the application and the homeowner isn’t quite happy, and then you have to resand the whole job. But now I get to have more one-on-one interaction with customers and give them the samples. I get to do it on my own time and really sit down with them to get a feel for what they’re looking for.

I’ve also picked up subcontracting [for other trades], so I’ll get to change their cabinets to match the floors and get more involved in what they want. I started with just flooring, but now I can pretty much take on their whole project and transform their house. It’s awesome to be so much more involved with the customers.

What is your most memorable customer experience?

We had this customer who made it a point every day to have food out on the table. She would leave us all these breakfast items and drinks in the fridge, she’d stop in and check on us at lunchtime and she’d let us jump in her pool. I like it when the homeowners are trusting enough to allow us to be part of their home and not just be a worker that they push to the side. She made us feel at home and like we were a part of her family.

Vazquez honed her skills on the job with her brother, as well as at a large flooring company.

What do you do to build trust and a good reputation with customers?

This is where working with my brother is great, because I get the chance to talk with customers instead of just being the employee who’s sent out to deal with their project. I’m the same person who did the estimate, who’s doing your floors, taking care of your project and making sure everything is done correctly. So I have more rapport with customers now.

Do you have any tips for building a good rapport with customers?

My biggest tip would be to listen. You want to come in and explain your process, you want them to be comfortable with you being in their home and knowing that you know what you’re doing, but you also want to take the time to listen to their concerns. A lot of us are quick to throw out all the details like, “Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this.” But they’re not going to retain any of that information when you’re throwing it at them like spitfire. So you gotta take the time to listen and just throw in the tidbits of information based on what your customer needs.

I’ve also found that explaining the process of what I’m doing makes the job a lot easier for both me and the customer, as opposed to just going in and starting work. Because then they’re like, “Whoa! What’s this stuff? Why aren’t the edges sanded?” So you want to hold their hand through the process and help them understand.

Communication is really the key because you’re coming into their home. They just want to understand every aspect of what you’re doing.

What advice do you have for people entering the wood flooring industry?

I say just go for it. It can be scary at first, especially with all the different equipment, terms and ways to lay your flooring. You’re gonna feel extremely overwhelmed, but just take it one day at a time. You gotta learn the basics before you can get better. It’s going to take time before you elevate to the next piece of machinery. But just like you’re going to tell your customers to “trust the process,” you need to trust it, too. Because at the end of it, you’re going to feel great when you have all this knowledge.

Don’t beat yourself up over mistakes either, because there are gonna be mistakes. Almost every floor you have, no matter what kind of professional you are, no matter how long you’ve been doing this, every day there’s something to learn. Those mistakes are the best way to learn. There will be times when things get messed up—just keep going. There have been a couple of times I almost gave up on this. Especially when something went wrong on a big job, and now I have to start over, and I cost the homeowner a lot of money. When that happened, I thought, “I’m just gonna throw in the towel.” But you can’t do that. You have to keep pushing forward. Because look at me now! I never thought I’d get an email saying I’m the Ultimate Wood Floor Gal. If you stick with it, then maybe you’ll be someone like me who just won this award. This is something I never expected in my whole life. So trust the process, and your day to shine will come.

Vazquez finds something new to learn every day on the job.

Do you have any advice for women entering the flooring industry?

My advice for women entering the industry would be to focus on the basics and don’t get overwhelmed by all the technical terms. As women, it’s proven we have more attention to detail, so don’t doubt yourself or your capabilities due to your gender. Though hardwood flooring is predominantly men, women have broken through the industry and have been performing at the same level or better.

Ultimate Wood Floor Guy: Steve Osborn

COMPANY: Black Forest Hardwood Floors LLC | Spokane, Wash.

YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY: 33

Oftentimes, bosses will nominate employees when entering the Ultimate Wood Floor Guy & Gal contest, but this is the first time in recent memory that employees nominated their boss, Steve Osborn. “I’ve been working for Black Forest for five years … Steve Osborn has been a great mentor to me and my coworkers, giving us opportunities to grow and become experts in the flooring field. He is very dedicated to having everyone in the company trained and oriented toward higher caliber work,” said Tony Jones. Chase Reedy told us, “Steve always goes above and beyond for his customers. He makes sure to provide the utmost craftsmanship and quality when getting the floors/projects done for them. Also, for his workers, he makes sure they have the proper experience to perform how they need to for the project at hand. He personally has taken me to three NWFA training sessions, a lead class and a WearMax finishing class. Out of all the bosses I have had so far, he definitely shows that he is trying to be very fair and proper with how he runs his business and maintains his workers.”

From the opposite end of the country, in Orlando, wood floor pro David Friedland, told us: “What  truly makes Steve stand out is his commitment to raising the bar—not just for his own work, but for the entire team around him. He invests in teaching his employees the art and science of installing, sanding and finishing wood floors at the highest level. Under his leadership, his crew doesn’t just follow directions—they master the trade. He’s built a company culture rooted in pride, precision, and professionalism. Steve Osborn is more than a contractor, he’s a craftsman, a mentor, and a true ambassador of the wood flooring industry. He doesn’t just keep up with the best. He pushes the standard higher.”

During our conversation, 2025 Ultimate Wood Floor Guy Steve Osborn shared how he started, how he’s refined his customer base, how he’s managed growing pains and more.

How did you end up in the wood flooring industry?

In 1992, I was managing a pizza joint, and then I moved back to Spokane, Wash., with no real construction experience or family in the trades. My brother-in-law had just lost his job at Blue Ribbon Hardwood Floors, so I called him and asked, “Hey, do you mind if I apply?” He said, “Go ahead.”

Did you have an interest in the industry before then?

No; when I started, all the equipment was foreign to me. I’d never seen anything like it. The only thing I had run before was a buffer because I had done some stripping and waxing of VCT when I was in my teens. Other than that, I had never run a drum sander or an edger before.

Before getting into construction, Osborn was managing a pizza place.

Did you have any actual training?

I certainly wish I had it back then. It was kind of like getting thrown to the wolves; it was a sink-or-swim kind of deal. After two years, I ended up quitting. My now-wife and I were two weeks away from getting married, and she was sitting right next to me when I raised my voice on the phone and quit—and she panicked a little bit. It was pretty scary to do that right before the wedding. But I ended up getting a job right away at St. Joseph’s Hardwood Floors, and that’s where it all started to click. I found out how rewarding it was to take something old and lifeless and bring it back with patience and precision. I spent seven years there learning the details—the layout, the sanding sequences, the art of stain and finish.

Eventually, Blue Ribbon called again—under new ownership—this time with an offer to come on as a partner. Like many partnerships, it lasted about a year before we went our separate ways. Looking back, that was the push we needed to finally start something of our own.

How did it go starting your own company?

We named it Black Forest Hardwood Floors, inspired by my wife’s German background and our love for Lägler sanders (which is kind of funny now that I have won this award sponsored by Lägler!). Those early years taught us plenty. The work came naturally; running the business did not. We were craftsmen trying to figure out the other half: operations, scheduling and finances. After reading “The E-Myth” and taking mentoring courses, we completely restructured how we worked. It was a turning point that saved our business.

When you started doing wood floors, what kind of training did you get?

I had no official training; it was just a straight-up crash course. The guy I started working with took one pass with me on the big machine and basically left me at the job to do the rest. When the paper blew off the machine, I didn’t even know you had to replace it. I thought the machine was tearing apart.

It wasn’t until 2018, after I started my business, that I started taking classes to improve my skills.

What does your company look like now?

We have five guys. I have three lead guys and two trainees that we’ve brought on this last year, and we run three vans. My wife runs the office and keeps everybody organized. I run crews, do bids and make sure things are delivered. I still go out and work with them on some of the higher end work that needs a little more attention or training. I used to say most of our work was sanding, but now it seems like most of our work involves installation.

"[Osborn] is very dedicated to having everyone in the company trained and oriented toward higher caliber work,” said Tony Jones, a Black Forest Hardwood Floors employee.

Do you work with a lot of builders or is it mostly directly with homeowners?

Probably about five or six years ago, we actually went through all of the contractors that we had worked for over the years, and we kind of cleaned out the ones we didn’t want to work for anymore. So we got rid of the frustration and kept the ones we really like to work with. We have one we’ve worked for since we first started back in 2001, and he will actually reschedule other trades so that he meets our time schedule. He won’t mess with our calendar at all, so we love him. We would take 20 more contractors like him, but they’re pretty rare. Now we take on new ones and see how they go, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll move on. Being able to say “no” is really powerful. I remember when we first started, we said “yes” to pretty much anything, and that’s not a very good way to run a business.

What kind of training do you do for your employees?

Our guys have gone through the NWFA intermediate course for installation, sanding and finishing, and they’ve done the online classes. Honestly, after the first time that they went to classes, you could just see something different in them. It’s like their whole outlook just changed. They became excited about the job. Not that they didn’t like it before, but now it was like they were connecting the dots.

Tell me more about the turning point in the management part of your business.

Like most contractors, we were piecing things together with whatever tools we had—Excel, Outlook Calendar, PDFs, QuickBooks, CompanyCam and a handful of others. It worked, just not well. We were re-entering the same info in different places, and nothing really talked to each other.  Most companies in our trade run into the same headaches—quotes that eat up hours, contracts that go missing, photos stored in five different places, messages that slip through the cracks, and time logs that never quite line up. All the data ends up scattered, and it becomes a constant juggling act that steals attention from the work we actually care about: the craft itself.

That realization changed everything. We started rethinking how we operated, not just how we sanded or installed. We rebuilt our quoting system to be clear and professional. We simplified contracts. We tightened up communication and made time-tracking effortless but transparent. We started monitoring job efficiency: comparing budgeted hours to actual time, watching crew size versus project length, spotting job site bottlenecks and tying performance directly to pay. Once we saw the numbers, things clicked. We could finally see where we excelled, where we lagged, and where leadership or training made the biggest difference. Behind the scenes, we also began working with a programmer to develop something new that ties together quotes, contracts, communication, time tracking and client experience. Our CRM is still taking shape, but it’s designed to simplify the chaos every contractor faces.

The change wasn’t easy, but it was worth it. We became more organized, more consistent and more profitable. Most importantly, our team could focus on the craft itself.

Optimizing his company's office workflow has allowed Osborn's team to focus more on their craft.

What do you think the biggest challenge is running a wood flooring business day-to-day?

Once you get to be our size, and maybe even a little bit smaller, being organized and not letting anything slip through the cracks becomes critical. Making sure that any concerns from customers are addressed right away and making sure they know where you are in the project and how it’s moving along is really important. If it weren’t for my wife being so organized, it would be a real challenge. She is amazing at her sticky notes! She’s great, and she keeps everything in order.

How do you and your wife manage working together all day every day?

As a couple, we have a little bit of stress with the business, but we try to make sure that we treat each other respectfully and have a date night. That’s important, too.

Do you have any advice for people who might just be starting in the business?

First, take care of your body. I’m about ready to go in for back surgery—so take care of yourself. Second, I would take advantage of the NWFA training courses and resources right away. But I’d also stress something just as important: the business side of this trade. Most of us got into hardwood floors because we love the craft. Still, at the end of the day, the work needs to pay the bills and support the kind of lives we want to live. If the business isn’t run well—if systems, finances, and operations aren’t in place—what should be rewarding can turn into a source of stress. Running a flooring business is more than laying beautiful floors; it’s building something sustainable for yourself and your team.

Osborn's team is dedicated to exceptional craftsmanship.

What are you most proud of in your business?

The people around me. Many of our crew started, just like I did, with no experience, and have grown into true professionals. Watching them train others, solve problems and carry that same commitment to quality—that’s what “dedicated to exceptional craftsmanship,” our tagline, really means.

Over the years, recognition has come in many forms, but for me, it’s never been about awards. It’s the client who calls to say, “Everyone who walks in comments on our floors.” It’s watching an apprentice who once doubted himself run a job with confidence. It’s hearing clients mention our team members by name when they describe their experience.

Honestly, it’s humbling—and a true honor—just to be nominated for this recognition. With so many talented craftsmen in this trade, I never imagined I’d be the one standing here. But if my story says anything, it’s that hard work, integrity and dedication to exceptional craftsmanship still matter—and they always will.