Stephen Diggins, Wood Pro Inc.'s Salem, N.H., branch manager and training director, says he has been compiling old floor stories for years in hopes of sharing them as a book one day. Here is "one of the most ridiculous I have ever come across:" "In a 1987 chat with Wally Johnston [pictured at right], a lifelong wood floor guy, distributor and NWFA member, he told me about an installer who had a project crumble before his very eyes. He had been laying down a few hundred feet of paper-face parquet with that old, thick, heavy black mastic. He completed the installation and waited overnight to sand the floor. Wally received a call early that next morning. The installer was shouting and screaming that the floor was junk! He would never use this product again! Expletives and profanities flew like verbal shrapnel. The installer shouted that parquet slats were rattling, pieces were popping up and he could pull the whole floor up by hand! When he could sneak a word in edgewise, Wally asked one simple question: 'What side did you lay into the glue?' The contractor said, 'The $#@$^& PAPER SIDE!' Wally calmly replied, 'If you read the instructions—that come in every box—the paper holds the parquet together. It is installed paper-face up so the parquet pieces set in the glue. Then you sand the floor.' Silence. Click. Dial tone."
See a collection of wood flooring job-site stories on the WFB Pinterest Tales From the Front board. Do you have a funny or bizarre job-site story? Email it to WFB. If we use it, we'll send you a WFB T-shirt.
