As a crew leader at Southern Oaks Flooring in Nashville, Tenn., Joe Wolfe has had the opportunity to create many beautiful high-end custom wood floors. But he also wanted to create something completely on his own, and when he and his wife were remodeling her craft room in their home, he decided that would be the perfect spot to show what he can create.
“I've been wanting to do this style of basketweave for a while now—I like the way it looks actually woven,” he says. To create the pattern, he resourced the scraps of previous jobs, choosing white oak and Brazilian cherry. “I've been learning hand-scraping, so I decided to scrape some of the borders to try to separate each border because I had limited wood of various sizes,” he explains.
Wolfe sanded the floor with every grit up to 180, then began the custom finishing process. For the doorway, “I really wanted something cool to meld my floor with my wife's hobby, crafting,” Wolfe says. “I had ordered a ‘Tree of Life’ stencil and actually hand-painted the tree with a pearl white paint.”
He chose to keep a natural look for the oiled floor, but with some custom accents. The borders have some titanium white color. For the field, he water-popped all of the horizontal squares and left the vertical squares dry. “I was trying to give a subtle difference that I hoped would give a real woven visual effect, which I think worked, because I received a lot of comments on how it plays on the eyes,” he says.
Although he’s been in the flooring business since 1995, Wolfe never did custom work until he began working for Southern Oaks in 2016 and began going to industry training and earning his certifications. “The classes really drew me farther into the craftsmanship side of the business,” he says. “Now it's all I think about, and I have a lot of design ideas I'm finally trying out.”
SUPPLIERS:
Distributor: Jeffco (Nashville) | Abrasives: Norton BlueFire (60 on big machine), Red Heat (60/80/100 on Epoch), Norton Mesh (120 on Epoch) and Blaze (150 on Epoch) | Buffer: American Sanders Epoch | Vacuum/Dust containment: Ridgid vacuum with Oneida dust containment | Edger: American Sanders EZ-E | Filler: Pallman X | Finish: Odie's Oil Super Duper oil with heavy titanium white pigment (first coat), Odie's Oil Universal Oil with light titanium white pigment (second coat) | Moisture Barrier: Bona R 540 (two coats) | Moisture meter: AccuMaster Duo Pro | Nailer: Primatech | Router: Bosch | Big machine: Bona K&T | Palm Sander: Festool ETS 125 | Multi disc sander: Hydrasand with steel plates | Saws: Ryobi compound miter saw, Kobalt table saw | Wood glue: Titebond II
