Well, after a seemingly endless period of preparation, last week was moving day. After 20 years in the same location, T&G Flooring moved operations and warehouses to one location – and our showroom to an entirely different location (788 W. 8th Avenue Denver, CO 80204). While we’re excited about the new digs, I have to say that if I ever consider moving a business again, I hope all of you will collectively put me out of my would-be misery before I act on that impulse.
One of the fun parts of the moving drill was going through racks of old materials left by the former owners. It was a bit of a time trip though the world of hardwood flooring, kinda like finding Dad’s ancient madras sport coat. You see, we had boxes and boxes of remnants from prior projects. Not sure what we were ever going to do with a 1/2 box of orange bamboo… but someone somewhere figured we might need it some day.
So what was trendy back sometime ago? We had lots of solid bamboo (again, lots of 1/2 boxes of solid bamboo). We haven’t sold solid bamboo in more than 4 years now. We have industrial maple parquet (used to be big in school gymnasiums). These 1″ x 6 inch sticks form a block about 6 inches square, all loosely joined and ready for glue down. The blocks are installed one by one in alternating direction. It’s a great visual look – but again, something we haven’t done in more than 7 years. We have an awful lot of unfinished herring bone (walnut, oak) – which is beautiful, but pattern projects are few and far between these days as people tend to the classic straight lay projects. We have glossy prefinished woods – something we almost never sell these days – as glossy floor products are not in vogue.
Three things to conclude from this exercise:
1. Wood flooring, like all home design disciplines, its subject to fads. We focus on the classics, but there will always be changes in style.
2. If you’re looking for a real deal, we do have some remnants of classic products that could be combined for a very budget friendly killer multi-species floor. Just an idea…
3. If you’d like to take your very own time trip down hardwood flooring design lane, stop by the local Habitat for Humanity outlet store. Many of the items that we had that were realistically usable ended up there. Less in the dumpster = better for us all. Think of Habitat next time you have excess inventory. These gracious folks do great work with things you and I may no longer value.
Now… back to setting up the showroom (sigh)…
