Installing the Wood Floors of a Client’s ‘Cat House’

Wood floor pros like Angel Olalde often go above and beyond for their clients. But for the wood floors of a client’s “cat house,” Olalde had to go below and beyond––crouching into a 4-by-6-foot space cut into the new drywall beneath the home’s staircase. It was part of a larger flooring project handled by Olalde, who owns Angel’s Wood Floor Restoration in Sterling, Ill.

“Funny thing was, the homeowner didn’t tell me about it during the bid,” Olalde told WFB in an email. “She brought it up the first day we were there to work. She was remodeling the entire house, so as we were walking though, she points down and says, ‘Oh yeah, this is gonna be the cat’s house. I need you to put flooring in there, too.’ My reaction was, ‘....Ummm, you got it.’”

The job involved refinishing flooring already in the cat-sized abode and a lot of patch work. In the tight quarters inside the cat house, he sanded the flooring with his edger and palm sander.

Olalde then applied a coat of penetrating finish, followed by a sealer and two coats of water-based finish.

“The most challenging part of it was moving around to install, sand and finish in such a tiny spot,” Olalde says. “I didn’t have much head room.”

And while the client was happy with the work, the jury is still out on whether the cat bothered to notice.