Richard Larson of Gaetano Hardwood Floors Inc. in Huntington Beach, Calif., deals with a certain type of clientele. “You’ve seen those Housewives shows? Those are my customers.” Staining a floor? “You can’t just open up a can of Minwax; they want something that’s hard to do.” Installing a floor? “We dry-lay the floor and they approve the floor board by board.” Character in a floor? “They’ll say, ‘We like knots, but we don’t like those knots.’”
So this spec house was no ordinary spec house. It’s a Newport Beach bluff-top house. The vision was “like a big beachy jewelry box,” Larson says, from the semigloss enamel millwork to the white marble to the onyx. In contrast to those shiny finishes, the wood floors are muted, making the millwork pop.
While most of the 6,800 square feet of wood flooring was 4-5-7 random white oak plank, the foyer floor is chevron. “We just did some wire-brushing and distressing and antiquing,” Larson says, explaining that oftentimes there can be 15 steps involved in creating the custom finishes expected in that market. Here, a low-VOC oil-based poly sealer was used to lock in the custom color, followed by a matte waterborne finish.
The ultra-custom work on the home, from top to bottom, showed off this ocean-view home to its full advantage: It sold soon after completion for an O.C.-worthy $16 million.
