Hickory is one of the most familiar species for wood floor pro Justin Vance, but using it to create this intricate diamond grid pattern in a 50-foot-long, 10-foot-wide hallway was a new feat.
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Hickory is one of the most familiar species for wood floor pro Justin Vance, but using it to create this intricate diamond grid pattern in a 50-foot-long, 10-foot-wide hallway was a new feat.
"The clients already kind of had the idea of wanting a diamond grid pattern, and they left it up to me to figure out how to pull it off,” says Vance, who owns Bend, Ore.-based Pinnacle Hardwood Floors.
Vance and his crew installed the 5-inch select hickory borders first, then set up a jig on the chop saw to cut the grid pattern. “Every piece had to be the exact same length and dimensions for it to work, otherwise it would taper off,” Vance says. They cut approximately 300 pieces and began gluing and nailing them at the center of the hallway, working their way toward the front of the house. The corners where the boards met in the grid pattern were glued and splined together to ensure nothing came apart or shifted.
When they got to the front of the house and turned around, they installed about halfway down the other direction when Vance noticed something was off.
“I was about 3/4 of an inch out, so we had to pull half of it out and then recut a bunch of new stuff and redo it,” Vance says. “It was a lesson learned; if you're off on one little angle, it can set it all off."
Once the readjustment was made, the rest of the installation went off without a hitch. With the grid in place, Vance was also able to flex some additional creativity at the entrance to the hallway, where he installed a diamond-shaped medallion.
"That wasn't originally planned,” he says. “They were just going to have a normal entryway, but I just thought it'd be cool to have that big focal piece … I just measured off the walls and the entryway and measured how big I could make it and then built it." Vance and his crew also incorporated a diamond-inspired pattern on the steps connecting to the hallway.
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When everything was installed, Vance sanded with 60-grit and 80-grit using a belt sander on the grid pattern, then used an orbital sander with 80-, 100-, 120-grit. They water-popped the floors and applied a two-part cherry, one-part red mahogany stain, followed by two coats of polyurethane finish.
Another crew came in to install the marble tile. Once those were in place, Vance returned for the final coat and began what would turn out to be one of the most grueling parts of the job: masking every one of the tiles.
"It was two days of taping off,” he says. “I went through like five rolls of blue tape."
As rewarding as seeing the completed floor was, Vance says his favorite part was documenting the work from start to completion.
"We did a lot of cool, fun stuff on that job,” he says. “It was just fun to keep taking pictures and seeing my progress.”
Suppliers:
Abrasives: Norton Abrasives | Adhesives, Finish, Stain: Bona US | Big machine: Lägler North America | Buffer, Edger: American Sanders | Nailer: Bostitch