Wood Floor of the Week: Woodwright Tackles Texas-Sized White Oak Install in LEED Gold Project

Ryan Kushner Headshot
Photos by Bruce Damonte
Photos by Bruce Damonte

11 14 Wfotw Woodwright 311 14 Wfotw Woodwright 2Everything is bigger in Texas, and Dallas-based Woodwright Hardwood Floor Company’s Turtle Creek Office project turned out to be no exception.

Installing the wide variety of white oak floors throughout the new 12,600-square-foot corporate office building in Dallas took just about every resource the company had to complete, says Woodwright Architect and Design Consultant Rick Farrell.

“You’ve got all these different scopes of work,” he says of the project, which included installing wood panels on some walls, cutting and installing white oak end grain in an executive boardroom, installing engineered rift and quartered white oak and engineered live-sawn American white oak, and prefinishing 65 solid white oak stair treads in the building—all while maintaining a LEED Gold Project status.

Woodwright’s involvement in the project began back in 2014, when it caught wind of the plans and reached out to the Seattle-based architect Mithun, producing more than 75 samples before landing the contract and beginning the work in June 2016.

“It was in our back yard, and we wanted to end up doing the install work,” Farrell says.

In the common area and in six conference rooms of the building, Woodwright’s installation crew laid 8,400 square feet of 7-inch engineered livesawn American white oak, using Bostik adhesive to glue the boards directly to the concrete subfloor. The sand and finish crew then used a Hummel to sand the floor, but with so much other construction going on in the building, the crew was often faced with delays in completing the work.

“Getting on the job and staying on the job is always a challenge,” Farrell says of working on large commercial projects with other subcontractors at the same time.

They eventually managed to work around the other projects, and applied Bona Traffic Satin finish to the floors.

When it came to the monumental staircase (featured on the cover of the recently mailed 2019 WFB Resource Book), the 65 solid white oak treads with aluminum inlays and risers were prefinished in their shop in order to save time.

“It’s hard enough to get everybody off of your wood floor when you’re sanding and finishing; but to keep them from going up and down the stairs when they’re trying to work on two different floors… it’s just too long of a process,” Farrell says.

The treads posed another challenge for Woodwright on the job site—their size. Each tread is 12 feet long and 2 inches thick, and while the office building does have elevators, “they’re freight elevators, and you can’t fit 8-foot-long material, let alone a 12-foot tread.” This meant the crew had to haul the heavy material up a couple of flights to install.

Woodwright completed the job by December 2016, wrapping up the project 3½ years after it first became involved in the initial design.

Farrell says one perk of the delay-heavy project was that it was in Woodwright’s home turf in Dallas.

“Luckily, on a project of this magnitude, it’s less than 10 miles from our shop,” Farrell says. “At least it wasn’t like we were driving to Houston every time a delay happened.”

Suppliers:

Adhesive: Bostik | Abrasives: 3M | Sander: Lagler | Finish: Bona

Page 1 of 796
Next Page
Resource Book
Looking for a specific product or a company? Wood Floor Business has the only comprehensive database of the industry.
Learn More
Resource Book
Podcasts
All Things Wood Floor, created by Wood Floor Business magazine, talks to interesting wood flooring pros to share knowledge, stories and tips on everything to do with wood flooring, from installation, sanding and finishing to business management.
Learn More
Podcasts