Wood Flooring an Art Form to North Carolina Retail
Jacksonville, NC, May 24--Terry Jones is a self-described wood snob. Walking through his storeroom in the back of Cedar Point Flooring, he points and gestures toward woods of any color imaginable, rattling off names like Kumaru, where it's from, and what it can do to make your floor stand up and say wow, according to the Jacksonville, Daily News.
Jones, who has owned Cedar Point Flooring since 1999, brings a creative artistry to one of the irreplaceable features of every home. Floors cover every square foot of a house, and while they must be sturdy and functional, Jones' approaches them as works of art and offers customers a chance to buy something original and more personal for their home.
"People come to us that are looking for something different," he said. "A lot of people are really unaware of how much, (just as personalities can be different), their floors can be just as different."
Working with exotic woods for 26 years and in flooring for about a dozen, Jones said he's devoted to making floors that accentuate the natural beauty of wood. He does not use stains, preferring to showcase the diverse color schemes of exotic woods. Not only is each type of wood different in its color and grain, but each tree itself is unique.
"I really am fascinated by the color range of wood," he said. "I encourage people to pick a color and that color exists. I have trees that are any color of the rainbow. You get a lot of variation within the tree itself. Trees are like people. Every one looks different."
With enough money and a floor in the need, these woods can find themselves on your floor, laid out in an elegant mix of functionality and aesthetics, capable of giving your feet something solid to walk on while making an artistic statement at the same time.
To make this statement, Jones relies on a stable of about 80 to 90 rare woods from all over the globe, ranging from the yellow gold of Bamboo to Purpleheart, a wood that is a naturally striking purple, and everything in between. Woods such as almost-black Wenge or African Peduk are much rarer than your classic oak or maple.
"We deal with a fair amount of rare woods," he said. "Even if it's an oak, it's a rare oak."
A quick tour through Jones's showroom shows his devotion to uniqueness and creativity in his floors. There's a section of showroom floor laid out like a rainbow keyboard, keys made up of 14 different woods, the color of burnished gold, or murky black like obsidian. Even purple, a shade somewhere between a plum and Barney the Dinosaur.
The most amazing thing about this "jungle mix" - as its called - of rare woods is that these colors are completely unstained, found naturally from the jungles of South America and Africa to the far side of the world in Asia.
"There will be no two floors like it in the world," he said. "You will have a unique floor. That's the greatest thing a person can say, 'I've got the only floor like this in the world.' "
There's a floor made of different kinds of wood shaped into a rhombus pattern that jumps from the surface and plays with your eyes. There's medallions - artistic designs that can be inserted into a floor as a focal piece - designed like maps of the globe or a spiral staircase descending into darkness or any number of patterns that can really accentuate a floor.
Medallions of any size - as small as a two-person table to large enough to become an entire floor itself - start at about $1,000.
"When you see a room with a medallion, it's really striking," he said.
Jones' floors are not cheap. He said they've done floors of different sizes and detail that range from $7,000 to, frankly, as much as the customer is willing to pay. Jones said the most expensive job he could recall was about $7.3 million.
"We've done floors that cost more than oceanfront property," he said.
