"They sent me a couple pictures of their furniture, and that design happened to be on their china cabinet that goes in their dining room," Boone says of the design of the red oak herringbone with walnut feature strips. “They pretty much gave me the reins to do whatever I thought would look good."
Boone, who owns Middleburg, Fla.-based Boone Wood Floors, began the job by tearing out 1,000 square feet of wood flooring that had previously been installed by a carpeting company. Boone and his crew then installed 1,500 square feet of red oak herringbone throughout the house, gluing it to the concrete subfloor and matching it to existing herringbone in the house.
"The only detail stuff that we had to do was just matching into the old herringbone, which was a tremendous feat in itself, because the people who installed it 60 to 70 years ago … had a bunch of miscuts that just kind of threw off the whole floor,” Boone says.
When it came to incorporating walnut feature strips into the herringbone floor, Boone and his crew installed the fields first, then came back with a router to cut in the walnut feature strips. The designs included radii of 2 feet, 3 feet, 8 feet and 10 feet. They cut in 3/16-inch strips for some of the larger radii, and the smaller ones were 1/8 inch to 1/16 inch.
The meticulous installation took about two weeks to complete and also faced a delay when the homeowners decided to move some walls around during a remodel.
When Boone and his crew were back on site following the wall rearrangement, they installed some additional herringbone, then sanded with 60-grit to 120-grit and applied a dark walnut stain. They completed the floors with three coats of oil-modified polyurethane.
Boone, who grew up in the flooring industry (his father being wood flooring legend Daniel Boone), says he appreciates the opportunity to use his own vision to craft an elegant wood floor.
"My favorite part was just being able to take a piece of furniture that the homeowner sent me a picture of and just scale that to size for the floor,” he says.
Suppliers:
Abrasives: 3M | Adhesive: Bostik | Finish: Bona US | Sanding machines: American Sanders | Stain: Minwax | Wood flooring: Satin Finish
