Hardwood Floors April/May 2024

Unfortunately, I tell almost all of them to get an inspection because it’s not feasible to touch water damage two weeks after a storm.” After Hurricane Katrina, Block did a lot of repair work. He remembers one of those jobs involved a house with seven feet of water, around 2,000 square feet of wood floors on sleepers, and about 25 percent moisture content. The insurance company wasn’t giving the homeowner enough money to replace the floors. However, Block strongly believed he could save the floors. “He was already out of the house because he had gutted it and replaced the sheetrock. I told him we would sand them sideways against the grain. Since

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN TROENDLE

The cowl, floorboards, and trunk of John Troendle’s 1928 Model A Speedster were made from 1 1/4” Louisiana swamp cypress that was salvaged from a home on Bourbon Street. The edges were wrapped in African Wenge strip made from wenge flooring giving a black accent. The instrument panel was made from a piece of solid genuine mahogany. The car was dry fitted together then painted and assembled. removed from his house. The contractor pulled the floor out, and Troendle saved the wood. “I collect old cars. A kit to build a Model A speedster came with a birch plywood deck, and because I am a wood guy, I thought, ‘I can’t put this on my car.’ We took the cypress and planed it, cut it up, and made a jig and a deck and installed the wood on the side of the car. It’s a beautiful car today, and it’s made out of Louisiana swamp cypress. As it turns out, you can make a car out of flooring,” says Troendle. Short explains that working in the French Quarter can be challenging at times because of parking, setting up tool stations, and the fact that there is always so much going on in the area. He recalls a memorable moment from one job. “I restored a mansion on St. Charles Avenue that once belonged to author Anne Rice. It was a magnificent place, and the job turned out spectacular,” says Short. “One thing that I’ll always remember is while we were there working, the clean-up crews were throwing old typewriters from a third story window into the dumpster. That was heartbreaking because there’s no telling what kind of stories have been typed on them.”

Only in New Orleans the floors were cupped, I didn’t want to sand off any wood; I just wanted to sand off the finish. Then, with the floors bare, I asked him and his family to simply live in the house for six months, and we’d keep checking the MC. The next day, he called me and said the wood floors were popping. I liked that because it meant the air conditioning could get to the oak and dry it out.” From there, Block kept checking it once a month. After six months, he patched it some, and the moisture content was back at 12, so they sanded and finished it. Block says it saved the customer from paying more out of pocket. “He thought I was a hero, and I said, ‘the hero is the air conditioner because that’s what dried up the floors, not me. I just opened it up enough so the air conditioner could get to it.’ I love to save a wood floor, and if it’s an old floor in somebody’s house, and I can find a way to save it, let me try to do that first instead of just tearing it out mindlessly and replacing it,” he says. Vision Wood has been a retailer in the New Orleans area for more than 40 years. They have a hardwood flooring gallery on the city’s popular Magazine Street. “The architecture of New Orleans is unique, so every job is a bit different,” says James Berault, director of sales for Vision Wood. “From shotgun houses in the Irish Channel to Antebellum Victorian mansions in the Garden District, we’ve installed everything from antique heart pine to 5/16” rift and quartered top nail.” Troendle notes New Orleans was built with a lot of wood. One of the most unique ways he’s worked with wood came to be when a customer on Bourbon Street wanted 300-year-old cypress floors

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