Thirty years ago when Matt Nasuti was just starting his company, Central Mass Hardwood Inc. in Marlborough, Mass., he had a job that ended up as a chopping block—literally:
Homes in our area have basements and subfloors, and this home in particular was an old lake cottage with straight-grain longleaf pine spanning the joists. We uninstalled flooring in a closet to match a few small repairs in the rooms, then took a quick lunch, came back and reinstalled the closet with a lesser grade of pine. Fast forward to 6 a.m. the next day, and my business phone answering machine had 20 messages from the frantic customer. While there was a hole in the floor in the closet, her cat had crawled into the cavity between the joists. She had to call her neighbor for help, and evidently his only tool available was an axe, so he proceeded to chop the floor until he freed her feline friend. Luckily he hacked at the cheap pine closet and not the irreplaceable longleaf! We felt slightly bad for her, so we fixed the closet for free.
See a collection of wood flooring job-site stories on the WFB Pinterest Tales From the Front board. Do you have a funny or bizarre job-site story? Email it to WFB. If we use it, we'll send you a WFB T-shirt.
