Famous Floors: Country Music Hall of Fame's End Grain

Photos courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Photos courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Photos courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and MuseumPhotos courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

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Norman Kaswell isn't a fan of country music, but he loves talking about the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

That's because his Framingham, Mass.-based company, Kaswell Flooring Systems, supplied 18,000 square feet worth of 2-by-4-by-6-inch yellow pine end-grain blocks—enough to fill an estimated 75 pallets—for the original floors in the $37 million facility's conservatory/lobby, upper-level Hall of Fame rotunda and Ford Theater.

The building (shaped like a bass clef when viewed from the air) is located off Demonbreun Street, which once was paved with pine block. So it made historical sense for Nashville's Tuck Hinton Architects to incorporate wood block inside the museum.

The flooring, with a walnut stain and originally finished with satin urethane, provides a handsome, rustic feel. "We're only dealing with a block of wood-nothing more," Kaswell says. "The art is in the installation."

Extensive water damage from the 2010 floods, plus an overflowing waterfall in the lobby and a leaky glass roof, eventually precipitated the refinishing of the floor in the lobby and the theater's stage. The urethane in the lobby was stripped and replaced with a natural oil finish imported from Denmark by WoodCare USA (Duluth, Ga.). The stage, meanwhile, has a completely new floor.

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