The floor was like any other floor, except for one minor obstruction. "Nothing too crazy… well, other than the tree," says Gaylord Forest Products' Greg Gaylord. That's right. Smack dab in the middle of a 4,000-square-foot prefinished bird's-eye maple floor, spanning three levels on the inside of a home built in Ontario wine country, was an actual maple tree, roots, bark, branches and all. The tree—dead, but injected with a preservative solution and coated in polyurethane—was cut in two parts, with one half rooted in the basement and the other appearing to "grow" through the first floor and up to the second-story rafters. In the basement, the lower half of the tree has its roots sunk 4 inches below the slab inside a 5½-foot-diameter circle. The 7-inch-wide, ¾-inch thick engineered maple bordering the tree circle was cut following a template. Gaylord says usually he would have set up a jig in the center of the circle and cut the shape with a router, but the tree made that impossible. One floor up, the owners had planned to surround the tree with marble, but Gaylord convinced the homeowner to undercut the bottom of the trunk by ½ inch so the crew could fit the 4½-inch-wide, ¾-inch-thick solid maple underneath. What's it like undercutting an actual tree? "Our guys were a little afraid to do it," Gaylord says. "We didn't want to mess anything up. Then it's 'Timber!' in the middle of the house."
