Parquet is cool...
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| Ark Oak |
Although we have been selling reclaimed parquet flooring for quite some years now, our customer base has really begun to change and grow. We have many more young designers and architects thinking about the application of the material in novel and imaginative ways.
We have sold quite a few reclaimed parquet floors which have been laid without being sanded, just to create a 'lived in', or a random look, like the floor in the photo which was laid in an Ark shop in the Arndale Centre, Manchester. This is generally in public areas like shops, offices, bars and the most recent one, a cinema!
Customers are looking at ways of using the wood creatively too, using parquet on the floor and then continuing it up the walls for example. We have a customer making table tops with reclaimed parquet, another cupboards. All very interesting and challenging to the classic use of parquet. Stuff which we are always delighted to hear about from our customers as well as friendly builders. So you can see why parquet flooring is cool!
On a more serious note, reclaimed parquet is a great option for flooring (and walling sometimes!) which we hope over the next few years will increase in popularity and uses, because otherwise it goes to landfill. We shouldn't waste timber that still has a useful life and if it is reclaimed correctly parquet can still have another incarnation.
In its original location parquet would have been an expensive floor, selected because of its hard wearing properties. It was also a material that could be laid onto concrete. There must be many of us out there who sat on a school assembly hall floor and were extremely glad it was made of wood! And it would have been terribly exotic too!
Keep thinking creatively about how to use this fantastic resource. We would be really interested to hear your ideas!
