Hardwood Floors June/July 2019

CATEGORY: Best Circular/Curved Application + Members’ Choice

A Stitch in Time (Continued)

“Since this room was in the basement of the home, there weren’t a lot of windows. She loves the mountains, so I wanted to bring those majestic elements into the space,” says Rocco. “I also wanted to incorporate her other passion in life, being a seamstress and sewing.” Rocco first came up with the idea to install an offset chevron pattern in white oak to mimic the Rocky Mountain range. Rocco and his team, consisting of technicians Kevin Eder, Paul Chaffin, and Yesid Ortiz Castro, started production of the chevron pattern. After the materials were cut and delivered to the site for acclimation, Rocco’s mind didn’t rest. “The closer we got to the time to do the installation, I knew that I wanted to do more. My thought was, she’s a seamstress, so I really wanted to attend to that and do something that mimicked a sewing stitch,” says Rocco. “I did some research and found a stitch called a chain stitch, commonly used in Zouave designs, that I thought would be interesting and complicated enough to give my technicians and myself a good challenge.” Next, Rocco added an outside apron consisting of red oak, maple, and padauk. He and his workers created templates for a 43'- and 43.5' radius since the room was not perfectly square. They cut the inside radius first, laid the maple soldier border and fanned corners, then routed the outside of the apron. Next, the team had to make a procedural decision on whether they wanted first to inset the stitch pattern and then stain the outside or wanted to stain first and then do the stitching portion. “We decided that we wanted to do the routing of all the stitch work first, which was another jig template that we set up. Then we went through and sanded everything on the inside and sanded the soldier border flat and stained all of that,” says Rocco. The teambegan the arduous process of making the actual stitch pattern, which consisted of four pieces of maple and two pieces of padauk. After cutting, the pieces had to be steamed and placed into a jig so they could dry in the bent pattern. Once they were dry, the team removed the pieces from the jigs, glued them, and put themback in the jigs to dry overnight.

Rocco first came up with the idea to install an offset chevron pattern in white oak to mimic the Rocky Mountain range.

The stitch insert was hand-routed using a template, and the tips were hand-chiseled.

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