One of wood floor pro Javier Cardenas’ mottos is to always think outside the box. That motto became literal when creating the floor for this completely hexagonal-shaped mansion in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “You had no boxed rooms or anything like that,” Cardenas says of the 2,000-square-foot building. Cardenas and his team at Exotic Flooring and Design LLC developed the unique floor design with Dana Vagnetti of Valia Design, deciding to mirror a “pinwheel” pattern in the main room’s skylight. Cardenas used 7-inch-wide engineered white oak for the project, hand-cutting over 400 pieces for the centerpiece. “Every little end piece, we had to cut them precisely, and every single one of them was different,” Cardenas says. The installation began in the center with the pinwheel and required careful measuring from the ceiling to the floor to ensure it lined up. They worked outward from there, both gluing and nailing. They sanded with the drum and edger followed by a multi-disc, then applied stain and four coats of polyurethane finish, hand-screening between coats. In the midst of the intense “out-of-the-box” jobs Cardenas has become known for, he sometimes stops and asks himself why he puts himself through the creative stress. The answer came at the end of the job when he saw the stunning completed floors. “It’s one of the better projects we’ve ever done,” he says.
SUPPLIERS:
Adhesive: Bona | Abrasives: 3M Regalite | Big machine: Lägler Hummel | Buffer, Multi-Disc: American Sanders Epoch with HydraSand | Designer: Valia Design LLC | Distributor: Erickson’s Flooring | Edger: Lägler Flip | Finish: Lenmar | Stain: DuraSeal | Wood flooring: Viking Hardwood Flooring
