Project: Panga-Panga Parquet Flooring Restoration

Before the works

Our initial survey found this property in early stage of complete refurbishment. Much of the floors covered and through the thick, old solvent-based varnish of the limited accessible areas, our best guess was going for a sapelle mahogany.

It is always recommended for parquet floors to go through gap filling on every restoration, as the resin helps the bond through the large amount of blocks. It is here, where the hardness of some exotic timbers shows off, as the gaps these floors will have is always less than many other lighter timbers likes - pine, maple or oak.

How we did it...

Our biggest challenge during this parquet flooring restoration project was to work around a way of finishing the floors dealing at the same time with an early delivery of unassembled kitchen units, ready to take their place soon after our works.

After stripping down the old polyurethane varnish and taking the glide of medium grid abrisive over the naked african timber we realised by the unmistakeable smell of coffee and the little white sparkles on the unfinished light brown surface indicated our initial guess was in wrong direction about the timber of the floors.

Panga-panga comes from East and South-East Africa. This timber species has a distinctive character, with excellent durability and really hard wearing qualities. It has dark chocolate brown colour with alternating depths and whitish tissue which has the effect of stripes and swirls.

The appearance of this amazing timber floors came as surprise to the eyes of the owners, after the application of our final coat of waterbased commercial grade lacquer in matt sheen.