The project, using the Brazilian cherry coordinating with new maple flooring, was part of an ongoing effort to revitalize a historic neighborhood on the east side of Indianapolis, Ind. It’s the fourth home Linton has done for the contractor leading the large rejuvenation effort, and each time Linton has been given a little more artistic leeway for crafting the floors.
“She just gave me my own creative freedom to take it and run with it,” Linton says of the design of this project’s floors, which feature elaborate borders, medallions and a wood floor rug. The Brazilian cherry was salvaged from another home.
“Brazilian cherry really complements the maple; it kind of just pops with the reds and yellows,” says Linton, who owns and operates Lebanon, Ind.-based JL Hardwood Flooring Restorations. He drew inspiration from the 100-year-old home’s stained glass windows to develop the Brazilian cherry diamonds in the complex border.
Once he’d figured out his game plan for the two levels of the house, he brought the maple and reclaimed Brazilian cherry to acclimate in the home. However, the project faced a setback when the house was robbed of its HVAC.
“So I had to take a break and wait again...it was frustrating for everyone,” Linton says.
When they were finally able to return to the site, Linton and his crew began the nail-and-glue-assist installation on the first floor, starting with the borders, which flow through every room. The old house had a new addition, so half the subfloor was plywood and half was old pine.
When Linton and his team had installed half of the border, the crew began installing the Brazilian cherry field while Linton completed the second half of the border.
In the dining room, Linton used hickory to create the checkerboard-pattern wood floor rug, chosen to match a stained glass window overlooking it. Of course, there was another reason Linton wanted the wood floor rug: "I don't like customers covering up my floors with area rugs,” he says. “So I would much rather do a rug inlay so they never want to cover it up."
When the first floor was complete, they went back and recessed the border’s 150 Brazilian cherry diamonds, which Linton had cut with an oscillating saw.
“The job looks great without those little diamonds, but it just added even more,” Linton says.
While the first floor was mainly Brazilian cherry with maple borders, the second floor was mainly maple with Brazilian cherry borders. Instead of flowing throughout the floor, those borders are confined to the different rooms.
When the floors on both levels were complete, Linton went back and installed a medallion of Brazilian cherry, maple, oak, sapele and walnut at the bottom of the stairs of the first floor, then inlaid another Brazilian, maple and sapele medallion on the second floor. In a project that salvaged so much Brazilian cherry, the medallions were a fitting addition.
"Both medallions were going to be thrown away, as well, so I saved them from being tossed in the dumpster,” says Linton, noting he’d inherited them from a company he’d once worked for that was going out of business. The medallions were still in good shape, and one had been hanging on the wall of a showroom for years.
“I had to get the brackets off the back of the smaller medallion that we did upstairs,” says Linton. “It was actually only a 3/8-inch medallion that we had to glue to some to plywood to build it up as a 3/4-inch, because it was just a sample piece."
With the medallions in place, the team then began sanding the floor with a 40-grit on the big machine and a 50-grit with the edger for the complex borders.
"It was kind of a nightmare for the edger guy,” Linton says. “He had to do a lot more edging."
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They stained the dining room’s wood floor rug to create the checkerboard look, choosing a red stain for every other square to complement the Brazilian cherry. They then gave the floor a coat of water-based sealer, followed by three coats of water-based satin finish. Once the house is sold, they plan on applying a final coat of water-based finish to the floors.
For Linton, it’s the first coat of finish that stands out as the most memorable part of the roughly month-long project.
“I could envision how pretty it was going to be when we started installing, even though the Brazilian cherry was all scratched up from being reclaimed from another project,” Linton says. “Once we put the first coat of finish on it, that was probably the most satisfying moment, when everything starts popping.”
While Linton has proven the tenacity of hardwood flooring with this reclaimed Brazilian cherry’s rags-to-riches story, he’s also proven something else: that it takes a true craftsman to make it happen.
Suppliers:
Abrasives: Norton Abrasives | Big machine: Galaxy Floor Sanding Machines | Edger: American Sanders | Finish: Bona US
