After 30 years as a carpenter, Jerry Bennett of Williamstown, N.J., has made just about everything there is to make from wood, and this year, he added cypress-stick wood flooring to the list. After a neighbor gifted him the wood from two felled cypress trees, Bennett's project began as many unique ideas beginâwith a bonfire and a beer. "I had a fire burning and was drinking a beer and I'm looking at the wood, and I said, 'Well, that looks like a floor to me,'" Bennett recalls. He spent four days using his miter saw to cut the branches "like salami" into ½-inch-thick circular pieces. Using polyurethane adhesive, he glued the random-size pieces to the plywood subfloor in his 160-square-foot kitchen, mixing sawdust with epoxy to create a grout. Local wood floor pro Jason Diaz was hired to sand the floor before Bennett applied two coats of clear marine epoxy. Bennett estimates the entire project took 120 hours to complete. "Had I known the amount of labor this was going to be, I might not have done it," he laughs. "But it turned out looking better than I ever imagined it."
