There are some wood floors that rarely cross your mind after they’re installed. Then there are those you never forget. In this case, the floor even inspired the name of a company, as well as a tattoo.
“It kind of looked like a meteorite hit it,” says wood floor pro Frank Horrigan, who, after installing the 600-square-foot sunburst floor, went on to found Danbury, Conn.-based Meteorite Design House with his wife (he’d previously operated Frank’s Wood Floors).
Before Horrigan’s proverbial meteorite struck, its floorboards had sat unwanted in a garage. A builder had been trying to get rid of the leftover red and white oak and asked Horrigan’s parents, who run a garage door business, if they wanted it. They relayed the offer to Horrigan, who enthusiastically accepted.
"I had an idea that I wanted to do once I saw the wood itself,” says Horrigan, who sketched the design out on paper. When he showed the “meteorite” drawing to one of his clients, they were appropriately starstruck, and gave Horrigan the green light to proceed.
After organizing the random-width flooring into piles, Horrigan picked out two short boards and aligned them with north, east, south and west in the center of the room. From there he took the other boards, as well as some walnut and cherry he had left over, found their center and cut them in half using a circular saw and Fein multi-tool, and then installed them intersecting the central boards. “I didn't want it to look like a uniform, cookie-cutter kind of thing,” says Horrigan, who mixed different lengths and widths in the design.
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Horrigan top-nailed the boards to the plywood subfloor as he went.
He sanded, water-popped the floor, stained it with a golden oak color and applied three coats of polyurethane finish.
A project that started out as an ink drawing ended with ink as well, as Horrigan and his wife not only modeled their company’s logo after the design, but also got matching tattoos of it. The process inspired Horrigan to draw out his designs more often.
Horrigan and his wife got matching tattoos of the design following the installation.
“I have pages of drawings now just for the right client,” Horrigan says. “I can’t wait to do another one.”
See another of Horrigan's unique drawings turn into flooring here.
Suppliers:
Abrasives: 3M | Big Machine: Galaxy | Buffer, Edger: American Sanders | Filler: Woodwise | Finish: Lenmar, DuraSeal | Nailer: Porter Cable, Bostitch | Saws: Porter Cable, Fein | Stain: Minwax
