When a Flooring Company is MORE Than a Flooring Company

Unique Wood Flooring Projects are our Specialty

In the flooring business, “close enough” often is just not “good enough.” Intertech has helped many clients over the years who wanted to precisely match new flooring to existing flooring. Exact color, exact products, exact designs. Since we are pretty exacting ourselves, unique projects like that demand precision and creative solutions are our expertise.

So, the general contractor for San Antonio’s Rogers Middle School approached us about matching benches and tables to their existing wood flooring, we didn’t hesitate, despite the unique nature of the project and the challenges it would entail.

A Non-Flooring Project to Match Wood Floors

In its new wing, Rogers Middle School had used solid maple wood floors. In the common areas on floors 1-3, they wanted to add triangular-shaped tables and benches made of the same wood to match the floors. The school had reached out to other flooring contractors, but none had the expertise to take on the project. The challenge – because school was in session with students on campus, the finish had to be applied and dried for near-immediate use.

That meant traditional polyurethane was not an option. Traditional polyurethane floor finishes can take up to a month to fully cure. And they only last a year – meaning more potential downtime and expense for the school every 12 months. An alternative that Intertech has used successfully on many fast-turn projects are UV coatings, which are dry to the touch within 2 hours and once UV-cured, are fully ready and usable for everyday use.

“For this unique project, though, we knew that using UV coatings would not work, either,” said Billy Chrzan, Intertech Flooring director of wood flooring and project manager/safety. “If we would have used UV, we could have cured it the same day, but we would have needed to apply multiple coats and wait between each coat, which wasn’t an option with students on site.”

The LED Alternative: Fast Wood Floor Finishes

Instead, he remembered a product that had impressed him at a recent Wood Expo. In use in Europe for more than a decade, the product, Vesting, can be applied to any raw wood. It is an oil-Based (zero VOCs) finish and color for wood and parquet floors in heavy traffic uses.

“We then used a unique LED curing process that cures the finish literally in seconds,” said Chrzan. “Aside from one project in the Northeast, Intertech is the only flooring company using this product in the US.”

Vesting LED-HardWax Oil contains a unique mix of oils, waxes, resins and additives. Because of this, the oil cures and hardens in a split second when it comes into contact with LED-light. When finished, the wood surface is instantly resilient and protected against dirt and moist.

“With a team of just four and in less than three weeks, we were able to meet the client’s needs without having to close any hallways,” he said. “We applied it, cured it, walked away and the students were able to use the tables and benches immediately.”

Intertech Flooring is finding great interest in its LED curing process, especially with businesses that require no downtime. “Not only is it fast, we also can have colors custom matched precisely to the client’s specification,” Chrzan said. “For example, we are now using it in some areas of water damage from frozen pipes at UT. We matched the baseboards exactly, and now that color is saved for us should we ever need to use it again for another UT project.”

If you are looking for solutions to keep your wood floors beautiful, let us show you how UV and LED finishes can help. Email Billy Chrzan, Director of Wood Flooring, today for a free demo.