Not all refinishes begin with a 2 million-year-old fossil and end with 12 pounds of live lobster, but this one by Oakville, Ont.-based Azores Hardwood Flooring Inc. did.
The job was an insurance claim on a custom walnut and wenge parquet floor in a high-end home. Someone had dropped a hammer on the flooring, and Azores installer/sander Shawn Garcia arrived on the scene to repair and replace the damaged boards. The job evolved into a refinish of the entire roughly 10-year-old floor to match the new boards with the existing ones.
But before Garcia and two other Azores crew members got started on the approximately 1,700-square-foot project, there was a bit of a roadblock––a 2 million-year-old one.
"They actually had an artifact there that was 2 million years old,” Garcia recalls. The sculpture-like fossil rested on a large stand. "This fossil was probably like 9 feet up, 4 feet across,” Garcia says. “It was of some prehistoric plant or something like that … She wanted me to sand around it.” Garcia didn’t need 2 million years to consider that option: “I'm like, 'My insurance can't even cover that! That's gotta go.'"
The homeowner relented, and the large fossil was hauled away by museum-quality movers “literally wearing white gloves,” Garcia says.
With the prehistoric liability removed, Garcia got back to the hardwood, sanding the ¼-inch boards with 40- and 60-grit on the big machine to start. He then glued down the floor’s different-sized replacement walnut pieces, which he’d planed down and cut with a sled on his table saw.
During the sanding process, they discovered several boards had loosened, so Garcia used a 16-gauge needle to inject adhesive into the affected areas.
They then trowel-filled the entire floor and sanded with a multi-head sander up to 120-grit.
"I’m constantly clocking around when sanding a parquet floor like this,” Garcia says. “That helps knock everything down and helps prevent undulations in the floor so it becomes really, really flat."
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An area of the floor above the wine cellar had 2-inch-thick glass in it, so the crew taped over the glass and used a hand-scraper and palm sander for those areas.
Garcia then sealed the floor with a mixture that was two parts linseed oil and one part urethane. “It gives it a real richness,” he says.
He then troweled one coat of a waterborne oil fortified polyurethane satin finish, rolled a thin coat, buffed again, and rolled on the final coat.
The job took about a week and a half to complete, and during a late night of working, the homeowner asked if she could get the crew any refreshments. Garcia joked that a lobster dinner would hit the spot. They all laughed, but the homeowner didn’t forget.
“Sure enough, at the end of the job she gave us four 3-pound live lobsters,” Garcia laughs. “My brother didn’t want any, so me and my dad had a feast.”
Suppliers:
Adhesive, Multi-head sander: Bona | Big machine, edger: American Sanders | Finish: Loba-Wakol | Urethane sealer: Fabulon
