“The homeowner was disgusted with her Brazilian cherry floor, which included a maple border and granite inlays,” says flooring craftsman John Mullen. John’s handiwork was first featured in the Fall ’05 issue and FABULOUS FLOORS brought him this challenge.

Says John, “The cherry was purchased before the new finishes came out, and that’s why it didn’t wear well and why the color was uneven (a mix of reds and yellows!) and why the maple also turned yellow.”

The owner wanted to pull everything up, but John said no to the idea. They talked, and he came up with an idea to save a majority of the original floor, bring a new creative dimension to it and refinish the whole new look in a modern and tough finish.

The original maple borders and granite medallions had been installed using a bad router. The fit was poor and ragged to begin with, John reported, and the granite was worn because it had been unevenly installed.

“I knew I could give it a new personality by enhancing the existing floor,” he said. “I looked at what it could be, not what it was. This one I knew exactly what I could do.” That included creating custom wenge exotic wood medallions and installing matching wenge inlaid strips along the original maple to pull everything together. The wenge was sourced through Hoboken Floors.

The first thing he did long before arriving was to fabricate the wenge diamond medallions and make them a quarter-inch oversized from the originals. Then he made 3/8-inch strips from solid wenge. He began by removing the old granite medallions, then routing the old openings and the edges of the maple, measuring very carefully to ensure that the lines on the diamond inset met the midline of the new maple-wenge border.

The medallions and borders were epoxied in place, and a few necessary boards were replaced from a stash of extras the owner had kept from the original installation.

The first owner of a BonaKemi dustless refinishing unit in the Western Massachusetts region, Mullen said the next phase was to sand off the old finish and sand the new inlays flush and smooth. “The sanding would lighten the cherry and bring up the grain,” Mullen said, adding that the new topcoat would prevent deep, uneven darkening.

The original floor had fine, micro-bevel V-grooves between the planks, most of which were removed during sanding. To fill in gaps and give the floor a smooth, perfectly flat continuous surface, his crew troweled on a tough, water-based filler. (The crew consists of brother Alex and Jon Layfair, both experienced in high-end building techniques before getting into the floor refinishing business.)

The prep was finished with a fine, 120-grit screen. The homeowner was delighted with the project even before the final finish went on due to the refinishing system, which was connected by a huge vacuum hose to a high-powered, trailer-mounted vacuum system located in the driveway. It’s so clean, the crew doesn’t have to wear a mask while sanding and screening.

After a sealer, Bonaseal®, was applied, two coats of super-tough Traffic® topcoat were applied. While the new floor can be walked on the next day (in socks or slippers), it takes 48 hours for a full cure. As tough as the new floor is, Mullen still recommends protective pads under the furniture. “Every three to five years, this floor should have a re-coat,” he says. That’s not a full sanding and refinishing, it’s a light scuffing and new finish application to keep it looking top-notch.

Next issue, John tackles the hall and livingroom.