Hawkins County man wins Floor of the Year Award with his last design

ROGERSVILLE — Wayne Highlander has labored as a hardwood flooring contractor for 30 years.

But due to health troubles, he made a decision that he would put in his previous flooring and enter it for the Floor of the Yr Award sponsored by the Countrywide Wood Flooring Association.

“About 8 several years back, we purchased an old, historic home in Rogersville,” Highlander, 61, explained. “And I understood that what my spouse noticed was the exterior, but what I imagined was, ‘This is gonna be a truly great place to do some great flooring, actually intriguing flooring.’ ”

The Floor of the 12 months opposition is a worldwide contest, and Highlander, who is the adhesive profits manager for Bona US, has entered it quite a few occasions.

“I’ve truly been trying to get the contest for 20 a long time, but it’s extremely tough to get,” Highlander explained. “If you are likely to earn a Flooring of the Calendar year, you are heading to have to do anything pretty out-of-the-box and one of a kind, since there’s a great deal of expertise out there. …

“I understood I only had a person floor left to do it due to the fact my knees are shot and I really do not do floors any more with my career,” Highlander said.

For his contest entry, Highlander realized he wanted to make some thing that seemed three-dimensional. He submitted his generation beneath the Production class, and just about every item that touched the flooring was produced by Bona.

Highlander specializes in the art of marquetry.

“Some of the seriously fantastic floors currently being accomplished in Russia and in Europe are impressive marquetry floors inlays,” Highlander mentioned. “I’ve analyzed them above the a long time and turned really passionate about studying marquetry and combining that with my enjoy for carrying out hardwood floors.”

Highlander prefers to make his marquetry flooring working with classic procedures.

“It demands a great deal of patience because it’s all done by hand with a scroll saw,” Highlander claimed. “Some persons are accomplishing actually wonderful flooring, but they are using CNC routers, and it’s performed by computer system. But all this is completed like it was finished in the outdated times with the scroll saw.”

Highlander reported that marquetry flooring have three major factors: the discipline, the border and the medallion.

“One of the exciting components for me [about his winning design] was that it is on a radius, so I could do some genuinely neat scroll-sawing all around the border,” Highlander mentioned. “And I seriously required a nice medallion. I wished a little something when you walked in and seemed at it, the center pretty much appears like a rug that would be a actually timeless visible.”

His attempts finally compensated off. About the summertime, he learned he won the award.

“I mean it is one of my proudest achievements for the reason that it is so difficult to acquire one,” Highlander claimed. “Some of the most effective craftsmen in the globe are likely just after this award.”

Highlander explained he will get a lot of fulfillment from doing this sort of work.

“I like the obstacle,” he mentioned. “I necessarily mean, immediately after executing what is identified as straight laid flooring for many years and years, I really favored the problem of executing anything much more visually appealing. And flooring now is form of obtaining away from serious hardwood floors and then likely into LVT and distinctive solutions, but hardwood flooring are very sustainable. What I like about the flooring sector is that I have gone into residences with floors that are 150 decades old and sanding them in excess of and they search beautiful. So the sustainability element of it is really intriguing.”

Highlander also does a podcast on Spotify referred to as “On the Ground with Wayne and Rob.”