What was the coolest hardwood flooring job you ever worked on? Did you work for a celebrity? Install/repair in an amazing structure or location? I'd love to read some fun stories.

The one that comes to mind is the end grain floor we did in an entryway to a personal home. By personal home, I mean a home that looked like a north woods getaway retreat when you drove up to it...the place was massive and log construction. The entryway consisted of essentially slices cut from trunks , squared off and dried. Huge splits in the wood, but it felt like you were walking on top of a dense forest that had been sliced down with the swath of a mighty axe. Boy did it drink up our oil based poly!

The worst job(s) I've done are those barn wood jobs where there is no sanding done to the floor. The one I hate the most was done in an upscale restaurant. All they had me do is buff the wood lightly to remove sharp edges, they wanted it to look old. This was 2200 sq. ft of wood glued to concrete. The contractor that installed it did a pretty decent job, but you were still looking at old, super dry reclaimed wood that was uneven in height, and rough as anything.
The first coat of gobbled up 12 gallons of sealer, with subsequent coats taking on at least twice the normal coverage rate per gallon because I wanted to flood the floor with as much as I could, especially in the areas I knew would see abuse ( the first bar stool at the bar, the waitress staging area, entry, etc )
The first coat ruined my lambswool mop...I think it weighed an extra pound heavier with all the wood splinters shoved into it. The worst part of it was the complaints that I had missed spots and later that our finish wasn't any good. Clearly, I had put enough on the floor and didn't miss anything, secondly, the finish I used was certainly high quality. The problem was, anytime they dropped something on that wood, it flaked off...not the finish, but some of the wood. One spot they marked with blue 3m tape was from something being dropped on the floor, but the kicker was when I pulled the tape next to it off, there was slivers of wood stuck to the tape! Incredible. Of course the company that sold them the wood claimed to "have never had a problem with it before!" I have a folder of 60 pictures that shows otherwise. The worst part of it all? The finished product was really cool looking, but just was the wrong product for the environment it was installed in.

It was up in the Gold Country in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where the 49er gold rush began. The house was new construction, a quarter mile in from what was a country road. They hadn't put in the power line yet, so they had a generator out there. No one was around to hear, so I was working all night. The high point came when the generator failed, and the whole place went black, along with the sander shutting down. It took a while to get it back up and running, all by flashlight.

It's spooky to be running a sander alone in such a remote setting--I couldn't hear anything over the machine, and I certainly couldn't check behind me. I'd never really thought about that before. It took some time to get used to it.

Alloy, your story reminds me of when I was an employee working way out in the northwestern part of the country. We had this job way out in the woods with no other house visible for miles. There was about 3 feet of snow on the ground, and I got dropped off by myself to install. I'm pretty stoical but I have to say it really started getting to me. Temperature near zero, completely isolated, icy gravel roads, and this giant empty sky with nobody around, complete silence, no cell phone signal, for a solid ten hour day. Pretty creepy after a while.

You set up a vivid picture there, and I can see it in my mind's eye. You don't mention it, but there might not have been any heat there, either. You work hard, you keep warm. Take a lunch break, and you start shivering.

I remembered another isolated job, and this one puzzles me, looking back on it. It was a new senior center, up in the same Sierra foothill area, and it must have had at least 400 units. I was hired to sand down all the joints between the OSB floor panels. So I stayed in a motel, came in each morning with a Super-7 and a box of 16 grit, and went at it for however many hours I wanted to work. It was out at the edge of town, with no other housing around.

What's strange is that there was no one else working that job--I was all alone out there, for all the days it took me to knock it out. If a unit that big had run out of funds, there would have been high fences around it, and no-tresspassing signs. There also would have been no reason to have me working, if the future of the project was in doubt. For whatever reason, things were at a standstill, and it was easy to move from room to room--no painters, carpenters, or drywall installers anywhere, and no equipment to move, either--every unit was empty.

Burnt Circle Sawn Doug Fir. Awesome job minus the million microscopic burnt splinters we got. Here is a photo ( copy and paste )

https://www.facebook.com/paragonhardwoodfloors/photos/pb.100622406668909.-2207520000.1420950600./814057058658770/?type=3&theater



Or this Madrone with WOCA.

https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/419963_299499666781181_1476877052_n.jpg?oh=145445527b388a9d863d1b3cee32d0df&oe=55691525