I just finished a BR-111. I started in a run that went from one bedroom through to another bedroom, in one long run. I opened up 6 cartons of wood to pick and choose. I notice that there was not much variation in the wood, so I started gluing and laying, getting my starting row done and coming on with the master bedroom. Went and got a couple more cartons to replenish and they were very light, compared to the other 6 I started with??? Holy moly!

I went and opened 5 more cartons and they too were lighter and some blood colored boards, and some the same as my first runs.

So now I have a dark strip running down a wall and across one end of the other bedroom. I open 6 cartons and had no idea it had variation, how was I to know to open more cartons?? Isn't 6 cartons enough? Is it just lick of the draw?


I guesss I'm going to have to open every carton and scatter them everywhere to get a good rack on some of this highly variation wood!!!

I usually work out of 5 or 6 cartons, when it is a 18x18 room


I showed my client as soon as I notice what was about to happen and she was OK with it, and understood, as she saw there was not much variation and made a comment when I started, seeing I had many cartons open to choose from, but I'm not. It is bugging me. Let this be a warning!!! If your doing a high variation wood, OPEN ALL THE CARTONS!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Perry. I've got a customer considering BR-111 Triangulo B. Cherry, Professionally and personally, I fault BR-111 for not mixing their exotics better. I understand we are to work out of multiple ctns, and you did that.To have to open every carton and rifle through them for color and size is BS, IMO. No other flooring company is asking us to do this. Anyway, thanks for the heads up.

I am just guessing here, but I would imagine that this is due to BR-111 cutting, milling and then just shipping them as they come off the line. They are probably not mixing the lots at the factory and therefore you may get 5 cartons from the same tree. I learned this the hard-way as well. It bothered me so much that I pulled up about 100 sq ft and reinstalled it. Needless to say now when I do a BR-111 install, I take all boxes for the room, open them up and randomly rack them on the opposing wall with shorts mids and longs in separate piles. I have found BR-111 to have quite a bit of shorts, so I rack them separately to keep a queue of how many longs I have. If you are not conscious of this with BR-111 you can end up with a few of your final rows consisting of mids and shorts.

Here is a picture I popped right before I started racking out and gluing the starter rows. I prefabbed that panel to get under the doorjambs, so I could just lay it in the glue preassembled and be done with it.

Pictured, is 5 open cartons. There is another open carton you can't see against the wall, by the doorjamb. These were ALL dark wood with moderate variation and looked like any Santos I have played with in the past.

Were all the run numbers the same? How in the world are you suppose to get something done when you have to color sort the entire job, I can understand working out of 3-4 ctns at a time but more than that it just seems a bit much, anything that cant be blended in by working out of four or five ctns is asking too much imo.

Read the directions, maybe?

Yes Ray, I always read the instructions


What part of this did I not follow? I even opened more then several. I opened 6 cartons to see just how much variation there was to the product.



STEP 8: INSTALLING THE FLOOR
Helpful Tips
 Remove flooring from several different cartons to maximize color and shade mixture.
 Stagger the ends of boards at least 6" in adjacent rows. For floating application, stagger seams 12" to 15". No two end
joints should be within three rows of each other.
 Installation parallel to the longest wall provides the best visual effect..

A claim has been filed with BR-111 for a variation defect.

I think kls is on the right track.

If I get a BR-111 job in the future, I will be opening more cartons!! My last 8 wood jobs have all been BR-111, and this is the first time I have had this happen, with there stuff.

Had I not covered my flooring installed the previous day for protection, I would have caught it. It is my fault for installing it, and I am going to correct it on my time, when we hear back from BR-111.

If it's been completely installed you won't have much if any success on a claim regardless of who the manufacturer is.