One day, "Out of No Where", a HUGE hump placed itself on our showroom floor. It was literally like walking up a hill made out of wood floor. There was no sign of cupping, just a large hill. We began to search for the reason of this sudden terrain change in our showroom and noticed the floor around our HVAC system was nice and wet. The HVAC and the "hill" were a good 12 ft, or so, away from each other... So this could not mean any good news for us.
Thankfully we knew just the right company to call.... Wichita Wood Floor Specialists of course! We began by tearing out the damaged flooring, noticed the subfloor was wet as well and so had to tear that out as well. There was a huge surprise for us under the subfloor... LOTS of water! It was SO much worse than we had anticipated! We ended up having to tear out a 1/3 of our showroom floor along with the subfloor and had to completely rebuild it back up.
So what better to do with such a tragedy, than to make something AMAZING out of it!? We decided this was our opportunity to really show everyone what is possible with a wood floor. When folks come in to visit our showroom we like to use the term "Your Imagination is the Limit", but I don't think anyone takes us too seriously on it. So what better of a way than to recreate our Amazing city's flag with a light in the middle?
We called around to the "Best of the Best" in the Wood Floor Industry to try to receive some advice on how to properly install a light in the middle of our floor. We could not find anyone else that had attempted this before, so it was all the more reason to do it!
As the project got underway, the more ideas kept coming along with it. We ended up using Blue Stained Hickory (which really is NOT stained blue) for the entire flag, except for the medallion in the middle. For the middle we used End Cut Ponderosa Pine. Along the edges of the flag and in between each section of the flag we inlayed brass to help define each section. We then hand scraped all of the Hickory, which not only looks beautiful, but I feel gives it more of a "Waving Flag" look.
The medallion in the middle was the tricky part. Luckily we had met a gentleman by the name of Luis who owns a company name Karve here in Wichita who was a MASTER with a CNC machine. The first go around we tried using a Glow-in-the-Dark Epoxy. Unfortunately the wood acted like wood (go figure!) and the pores tried soaking up the epoxy before it could dry. So it was back to the drawing board!
We ended up with the idea to layer several layers of plexi-glass in the middle until it was flush with the rest of the floor. Viola! What we end up with is an AMAZING piece of artwork, with the Pride of our AMAZING city highlighted in our showroom floor!
We would love for you to help us get the word out on our artwork. Feel free to Share this Blog anywhere you like! For any questions feel free to comment below or give us a call Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm Central Standard Time. Wichita Wood Floor Specialists is located in Wichita, KS.
