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Any wood floor pro who has hand-scraped a 300-square-foot floor can probably appreciate the sentiment. Timothy MacDonough of MacDonough Woodworks, who completed this rustic hand-scraped rift-and-quartered white oak project in his own living room, certainly does.
"It was a week of scraping on my hands and knees; a lot of blood, sweat and tears … I'll pay someone to do it next time,” he laughs. “That was horrible."
But after three years of working with hardwood flooring master John Yarema of Yarema Marquetry, 22-year-old MacDonough, who launched his Lapeer, Mich.-based business this year, knew how to power through to realize his vision for the floor.
The white oak was left over from previous projects, and MacDonough tongue-and-grooved and ripped the random-width boards into the 4-inch ones using a table saw and router.
When he was done making his boards, MacDonough centered his herringbone with the French doors in the back of the room and began gluing and nailing them down.
“They're all 1-foot-by-4-inch herringbone, so there's 900 of them in the floor,” MacDonough says. “So trying to keep them straight, a nightmare.” MacDonough also added straight-lay boards with end grain plugs as an apron surrounding the herringbone.
Once the boards were installed, he started the grueling, week-long scraping session.
"I wanted to hand-scrape because I love the contour,” he says. For the color, MacDonough chose to dye the wood before staining.
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“Stain attacks more of the grain, and the dye attacks the whole board,” he says. “So if you look at the overall floor and you wanted to just stain it brown, it would attack the grain and the grain would be darker. But if you dye it first, it all looks even."
After dying and then staining, he applied two coats of oil finish, followed by a coat of wax, which he chose for its sheen. The project took him about a month to complete.
MacDonough discovered his passion for woodworking in high school, and when he went out on his own, he knew he wanted to challenge himself.
“I don't like normal floors,” he says. “I like really goofy stuff. I like the stuff that makes the homeowners go, ‘Wow.’” And he’s willing to give his blood, sweat and tears to make it happen.
“It's horrible work,” he laughs, speaking of hand-scraping. “But it's very worth it. It's beautiful."
Suppliers:
Dye, Stain: W.D. Lockwood | Finish: Rubio Monocoat, SC Johnson Paste Wax | Nailer: Bostitch | Scraper Blades: Red Devil
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