Mesquite Floor
This floor is a Texas mesquite floor, installed sanded and finished in Beverly Hills, Michigan. In my opinion it is the most beautiful of all domestic hardwoods we have here in the United States. This is America's answer to saving the rain forest with many of the rainforest exotic woods being illegally harvested, mainly Jatoba, also known as Brazilian cherry along with a boat load of other species.
Mesquite is a domestic wood that if it all disappeared today there would be a lot of happy ranchers in Texas, as it is a thorn type tree with thorns so strong they can flatten tractor tires. Have a close look at these pictures and tell me this isn't the prettiest wood you have ever seen.
Very Hard - Dimensionally Stable
Mesquite is a very hard wood. It's said to be 82% harder than red oak making it difficult to cut and very hard to sand. Mesquite is also the most dimensionally stable wood used in flooring, I'm sure you have seen some hardwood floors with gapping between the boards? This is a lot less likely to happen with mesquite. If your home has a good humidifier for the winter months, you would never see gapping in mesquite.
Customer Bought - We Had To Mill
On this particular job the customer had ordered the wood from a local lumber yard. When brought in it had a few problems such as no bevel or tongue and groove on the ends of the boards. In the pictures you can see we had to set up a little mill in the customers garage to avoid hauling all the wood to my shop and then back to the job. First we had to re cut both ends of each board to square them up, then a bevel was added on each end and finished with grooves on both ends.
Our job consisted of 700 square feet of flooring and mesquite doesn't come in very long lengths because of how the tree grows. This all added a couple extra days to the job, but when we finished it looked like a professional mill did the job.
Rubio Monocoat Finish - 100% V.O.C. Free
The homeowner on this job is a very eco friendly type person and had chosen a 100% V.O.C. free floor finish named Rubio Monocoat. Rubio is one of the finishes of the future with a very simple application method. One coat of finish is all it takes to complete, and is easily repairable that a young child could do it.
Cleaning procedures are basic to any other wood floor with sweeping or vacuuming. Maintenance oil can be applied in the same fashion as the original finish coat was applied. Rubio Monocoat comes in 30 different colors with some unique processes to give floors different creative effects like smoked or fumed oak appearances as examples.
Priced Higher But Has Wow Factor Of 10!
This flooring is priced a little bit higher than a lot of the exotics.Most of the higher price is due to the fact that the mesquite tree doesn't grow long and straight. My best estimate would be in the 15 to 16 dollar range installed sanded and finished with a V.O.C free finish. This is a floor that has a wow factor of 10 on a scale of 1-10. You're not likely to see this in any of you neighbors homes, and if you want a floor that is going to be hard for those rowdy grand kids and the large pets to tear up, this will be the one.
Rubio Monocoat Color Possibilities
Natural Finish - Pure (Clear)
Milling Bevels
Milling Grooves
