In response to questions like those, Covington Sales Rep Tommy Ellison likes to riff on an old beer commercial jingle: “If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the floor.”
The 22,000-square-foot project was one of numerous overlapping flooring projects Covington handled for the university, which had suffered severe damage to many of its facilities from a tornado in September 2018 and required new flooring as a result. The rec center was in the middle stages of being built when the tornado struck.
The northern hard maple rec center floor, which encompasses three courts, was nailed down over a Robbins Bio-Channel SB installed over concrete by multiple Covington crews.
"The installation is sort of day-in and day-out, something you do every day,” Ellison says. “But you're not necessarily doing it in a room this size every day."
When the massive floor was installed and sanded, the crew got to work on the unique paint and stain design, water-popping the maple before putting down the large stencils and applying the two different shades of wood-toned stain over the natural color of the maple. It was a tricky process, as the colors were adjacent to one another with no spacing in between.
“You had to put down one color, peel the stencil, come back the next day, put the same stencil back down” but in a different position, Ellison says. It was the same process for the three shades of red paint on the rec center court, which received four coats of clear finish. What look like flames in the design are also meant to represent feathers (JSU athletic teams are “Gamecocks”)—and with no lettering and no actual birds depicted on the gym floor, Ellison says the project’s specs were unique compared with other graphics packages the company had applied over the years.
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The project took 10 weeks to complete from start to finish, plus time to allow the maple to acclimate, all during an intensely busy schedule for Covington.
"This is all going on in August and September, which is the busiest time of the year anyway for gym contractors, because there are so many gyms going in at that time,” Ellison says.
Regarding the spectacular final outcome for the court, Ellison toasts the crew.
"The guys that really make this work are the guys who are out in the field doing the work,” he says. “Because it's easy to draw it, it's easy to estimate the cost, but they're the guys that have to make it happen, to turn it from an idea into reality.” The reality of the JSU Recreation and Fitness Center floor has received numerous accolades since being completed. And to riff on another old beer commercial tune, here’s to good floors.
Suppliers:
Maple flooring: Robbins Sports Surfaces | Sander: Lägler North America | Stencils: GameTime Wraps | Stain, Paint, Finish: Bona US
