Hardwood Floors August/September 2018

WFOY WINNER SPOTLIGHT:

Reunited After All These Years

Lenny Hall, a five-time Wood Floor of the Year winner, has been in the wood flooring business since 1981. What started as what Hall thought would be simply a job during college, eventually evolved into a lifelong career. “When I started working at Endurance Floor Co., it was out of necessity. I was going to the University of Rochester with a double major in physics and mathematics. I was on my own and forgot to renew for the grants and scholarships that got me into U of R, so I needed to earn some money to get back,” said Hall. “I had worked two previous summers at Endurance with my father and uncle, who worked as installers there. So I asked my father and he got me a job, where I volunteered for every hour I could get just to earn money for school.” Hall had worked there for about a year and a half when the owner approached him and said he wanted to retire and that he had a plan. at plan was that if Hall rented the building from him, he would give him and his daughter the company. Hall eventually bought the daughter out. “I had no desire to be a wood ooring guy at that time; I was just earning money to get back into school. But I decided I would give it a try. If it didn’t work out, then I would go back to school,” said Hall. “So I ended up still working in the eld and learning the company from the ground up. When I got

some control of the company, I analyzed what we were doing, nding the hardwood segment being more pro table per man- hour, so I transitioned it from an all oor covering company to a hardwood-only company.” en a 1986 magazine article served as a source of inspiration that set Hall on the path to becoming a cra sman. “I read about a guy in Dallas named Randy Yost who would do oors for $100 a square foot all around the world. I knew I wanted to be like that guy,” said Hall, “but at the time, I didn’t know about NWFA, and there were no schools, so I had to teach myself how to do higher-end wood ooring. I researched cabinet making, furniture making, and all the old cra smen from Europe. And I started practicing; there were tons of failures and redos on practice panels. en I would

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