Aug 9 2005
Patina Old World Floors (http://www.patinawoodfloors.com) was instructed by their client to create floors to look like they came from an old Southern mansion and creak like such old floors should. By using old world hand finishing methods coupled with modern technology, they did exactly that for the new 5 star luxury resort, "The Sanctuary" at Kiawah Island, S.C. that opened in the second half of 2004.
Quoting USA Today, "The first thing you notice are the floors. Painstakingly hand-planed to create the uneven look found in historic Southern mansions, the exquisite walnut planks in the lobby of the 8-month old Sanctuary at Kiawah Island ooze warmth and sophistication."
They may look like old floors and sound like old floors but that is where the resemblance ends. Unlike historic houses in the South, this nine and ten inch wide walnut plank was engineered using a 3/8" sawn wear-layer veneer pressed to a 3/8" plywood substrate which makes a more stable product in relation to the expansion/contraction factor. And this is important.
This lovely distressed flooring fills the expanse of the spacious lobby. It also extends into the open plan lounge, the reading room, the lounge bar, along the endless hallways that lead left and right from the entrance. It wraps around the graceful sweeping southern belle staircases and onto the entrance of the Jasmine Cafe on one side and to the northern wing on the other. It also ascends the staircases themselves, whose risers and stair treads are paved with the same finished walnut as are the floors of the mezzanines at the top of both staircases.
If this wide expanse of flooring shrinks and swells as normal wide plank would do in this environment which is sometimes hot and humid and other times cool and, the flooring would either pull away from the walls or push against them causing damage to both the flooring and the walls. Thus Patina, working closely with the architects and installers, developed a new flooring using both ancient techniques for the look and feel and modern technologies for the stability -- not to mention the sound.
This is the essence of Patina Old World Floors; they work hand in glove with their clients to custom design just exactly the flooring that the client has in mind while taking into consideration more than the look and feel required.