Five years ago, Disney and Nickelodeon animator Tone Thyne walked into Saulnier Floors’ store in Peabody, Mass., to pitch a floor made of No. 2 pencils. “I’m not sure how he found us,” owner Paul Saulnier says. “We certainly aren’t known for creating floors out of No. 2 pencils.” Thyne was remodeling the studio in his home and left a pack of Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils at Saulnier Floors to see what they could come up with.
The Saulnier Floors team devised the idea to arrange approximately 12,000 pencils in a herringbone style and secure them to the floor with epoxy. Saulnier Floors’ focus has been wood floors since its founding in 1951, but the business started doing epoxy floors 15 years ago, and this was the second time they could merge the trades.
Saulnier says his team worked on the project over the next four years as Thyne remodeled his studio. The first step was leveling the floor. The thousands of pencils would be laid over concrete and epoxy, so Saulnier says the subfloor needed to be flat. Prepping for the pencils included grinding the concrete, laying down two coats of moisture barrier, putting a primer on top of that and then pouring leveler. The team then added a fire-engine-red epoxy layer to add a background if any space was visible between the pencils.
Courtesy of Saulnier Floors
Because laying down each pencil would be too time-consuming, four pencils were taped together with the Ticonderoga logo facing up to create blocks for the herringbone pattern. The team experimented with sharpening the pencils to give the floor an extra edge, but once they realized they would have to sharpen each one to an exact length, that idea was scrapped. Creating the blocks took a lot of trial and error, Saulnier says, as the epoxy often dissolved any tape and left the pencils floating. To keep the pencils from floating, the team used double-sided tape to attach the pencils, then glued the blocks to the red epoxy layer before applying the final epoxy coat that would seal all the pencils to the floor.
Saulnier is glad he took on the challenge to create the pencil floor and is proud of the result. One of the original samples his team created now hangs in the showroom to show off to customers. “Anybody who comes into the showroom is like, ‘Look at that,’” Saulnier says. “I’m pretty sure nobody has seen a floor like that before.”
Courtesy of Saulnier Floors
SUPPLIERS: Adhesive: Wakol | Finish: Loba 2K Duo Satin | Moisture barrier: Wakol PU 280 | Wood flooring: Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils
