Hardwood Floors December 2017/January 2018

Wood

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• 3M’s Personal Safety Division has launched a new online resource, the 3MCenter for Hearing Conservation. Safety managers can nd articles and details about the seven elements of a hearing loss prevention program, as well as helpful videos, toolkits, fast facts and more. • Jared and Kristin Fitzgerald, owners of Southern Oaks Flooring in Nashville, Tennessee, were chosen as the winner, among more than 20,000 entries, of the Mercedes-Benz Vans’ “ e Right Van for the Job” contest. • Kidde recently issued a recall on two styles of Kidde re extinguishers: plastic handle re extinguishers and plastic push-bu on re extinguishers. e re extinguishers can become clogged or require excessive force to discharge and can fail to activate during a re emergency. Visit Kidde.com for full details on steps to take if you have an a ected model.

By Megan Lhamon

Before wood can be chosen by a consumer or installed by a contractor, it has to be manufactured. Before it can be manufactured, it has to be designed. For many of us, this step may o en get overlooked when thinking about what’s going into our living room, but interior designer Jamie Beckwith thinks it’s an essential part of the process. Ten years ago, Beckwith started a high-end residential interior design business out of her home in Nashville. As she was doing interior designs, she became increasingly interested in product design.

Enter the Jamie Beckwith Collection. “ e Jamie Beckwith Collection was born because I felt there was a void in the marketplace as far as wood ooring went,” says Beckwith. “ e available designs were standard. I had the idea to create a tile-hybrid to make a shape and pa ern similar to parquet ooring but taking it one step further.” “I played around with ideas, a ended a few trade shows to learn more about

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wood, and eventually decided I needed my own machinery so that I could make the products I envisioned,” she adds. “My place now is pre y much a laboratory. We have a facility in Nashville, used mostly for creating samples and designing new products, and one in San Diego.” Beckwith has continued to evolve her collection by designing other products using the signature wood component she originally designed and created.

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