Restoration Of The Parquet Flooring In St. Catherine's Church in Ealing

This is an interesting case explaining the renovation process of the old parquet flooring in St. Catherine’s Church. There are some interesting things to know about this project, first the clients complained that the whole flooring construction was literally moving.  Except that the floor was laid from two different wood species, which is making its look so attractive. When the church was renovated in 1915 they have installed the first half of the flooring, as can you see on the photos, with lighter wood specie. Then 40 years later during another refurbishing process in 1955 was installed the rest of the floor with parquet blocks cut from Mahogany, which is much darker.  This is the living proof for the durability and the longevity of the real wood flooring. Even after decades of high foot traffic, the original look of the wood can be restored.

First, our team had to fix the major problems. To deal with the floating floor, we had to remove, clean and refit every single parquet block. This process also included replacing some of the damaged blocks. Once the whole structure was stable again we could start with the actual restoration job. The first step was to strip off the old finish in few rows with a belt sander. When we have to work in historical landmarks such as churches, usually there are old wooden furnishes, timber side panels and ceilings with a specific authentic look, achieved due to the passage of the time. The owners must be warned that sanding will reveal the original colour of the wood, which will be much brighter and the flooring might lose its patina. The results of our hard work are remarkable and we successfully kept the charm of this century-old parquet flooring.

After the surface of the flooring was smooth and levelled, we’ve used the saw-dust remains from the sanding and mixed them with resin filler to fill the gaps between the parquet blocks. This service made the whole construction more solid and stable. The next step was to polish the surface one more time, so it can be perfectly smooth before the application of the finishing product.

The last part of the restoration job was to apply a protective sealant. In this case, our team used ‘Junckers HP Commercial’ which is hardwearing water-based lacquer. The sheen preferred from the owners was matt.