Sometimes on site, we discover well hidden treasures. No, they are not chests filled with gold coins and hidden there by pirates, however they are rare and valuable things. We explain it all in pictures.
One day, during the first appointment of our technicians at a customer’s home who wished to have a new floor installed, they noticed while doing their inspection work – which is the necessary prerequisite before any intervention – that there was an old wooden floor on beams under the existing floor. The advice of our technicians was obvious: the existing floor had to be recovered and restored.
At the customer’s request we sanded a small part of it to see in what condition it was, to know if it was possible to renovate it or not.
The test area confirmed the choice of our technicians.
The sanding showed that the parquet had remained very healthy and that it had kept all the properties that one expects from a quality solid wood floor. The client gave us the go-ahead to do the restoration.
These renovations are very exciting for us, because we are faced with unique situations where we don’t know in advance what to expect because each of these recovered floors is unique.
On this project, most of the work consisted in sanding the wood to remove all traces of self-leveling compound and to restore its raw aspect. However, some wooden slats that were too worn to be restored had to be replaced.
Additional challenges
Some projects offer additional challenges, such as repairing the parquet after a wall has been breached or making more extensive repairs in certain areas.
To bridge the gap between two rooms, it’s best to use the slats from the same parquet. Once we were fortunate enough to be able to reuse some of the wooden slats ripped out in the bathroom to install a new bathtub.
If there’s no way to reuse some of the existing parquet, we use new wood of the same kind and apply the same finish as the rest of the room. But even with the most careful application, there will always be a slight difference in color and appearance.
Hidden treasures, not as rare as one might think…
This kind of discovery is not an isolated case, as shown in these photos of the restoration of an old wooden floor hidden under a vinyl.
On site, our technicians did a small survey. They removed part of the existing floor to see what it was covering: bingo, they discovered a magnificent old parquet floor that could be completely restored.
For greater transparency with the client, this initiative was taken before the estimate was written and before the work began.
These out of the ordinary situations help us to love our job, they make us progress and make us proud of the work we do.
We’ll share more stories like this in future articles.
In the meantime, if you have a penchant for old parquet floors, you should know that one of our suppliers offers for sale parquet boards that are several centuries old and come from historical buildings (e.g.: castles or mansions). Other suppliers offer new parquet floors but with the appearance of old parquet.
If you are interested, come and visit our showroom!