It’s not every day the basketball court itself gets a rebound. When the owners of a basketball training facility in Los Angeles upgraded to a bigger venue, they decided to take their basketball court floor with them and give it a fresh look, to boot.
The original 6,000-square-foot Junckers hardwood had been in place for five years when the facility owners expanded to the bigger location, says John Safarik, sports sales manager at Denmark-based Junckers. “No need to send a perfectly good wood floor to the landfill,” Safarik says of the thinking behind reusing the boards. “And no need to cut more trees to create a completely new floor.”
The 5-inch-wide, 12-foot-long planks were removed and stored temporarily in preparation for the new facility. “We factored in a 10% waste/loss factor, which worked out to be just right,” Safarik says.
The planks are beech, the go-to species for gym floors in Europe, where Junckers is based.
The beech hardwood flooring was salvaged from the company's previous location, reinstalled and given a fresh design.
They were installed in the new facility over the course of three days by Joe Norman of Altamont, Utah-based Norman Sports Floors. Once in place, the court was sanded using a Clarke double-drum rider sander.
The original court had a “budget-minded” design when it was first installed years ago, as the business was just starting out then, Safarik says. With the new location, the owners of the training facility were able to give the court a design to match a new partner facility’s court.
Achieving that custom gray stain turned out to be one of the more challenging aspects of the project, as the partner facility’s court featured maple flooring, as opposed to this court’s beech.
“We promised the owners we’d be able to get close,” Safarik says of the stain color. “As it turned out, by making minor adjustments to the wood tinting color, a near perfect match was made.”
When the right color was applied, the court was sealed and given three coats of Hillyard high-gloss urethane finish.
The once “plain”-looking court now serves as a practice space for colleges and NBA players from teams like the Sacramento Kings and Utah Jazz, says Safarik, who calls the transformation a “Cinderella story.”
“It’s satisfying to know the owners, players and even Mother Nature are all happy with it,” he says.
