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ORLESTONE OAK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: TOM BARTON
Orlestone Oak is a familyrun company that has been established for around 70 years and is currently headed up by father and sons Barrie, Jack and Tom Barton. We pride ourselves on quality and craftsmanship throughout all branches of the company.
The business comprises a sawmill, joinery shop, flooring manufacturer and firewood producer. All this combined allows us to run with little to no waste and utilise every part of the European oak trees we purchase. We are always looking to grow and improve our company to allow us to not only produce higher-quality products, but also to create a great environment for our loyal team whom we value so much.
Please tell us about how this project started? The client for this project got in touch with us online. We started by conducting a site visit to ensure the supply and fit process of the flooring was smooth, and ensured the final product matched the client’ s expectations.
How do you process oak wood for these flooring projects? Like every other installation project, we ensure all our solid oak flooring is produced from scratch. We process the trees that we purchase from the UK and northern France, all from within 100 miles from our base in Ashford. We cut them, air-dry them and kilndry them at our base, then machine and oil them to the customer’ s specification. Doing all this ourselves gives us complete control over the entire process.
What timeframe were you given to complete this project? Did you manage to stick to it and did you encounter any unexpected complications? When advising the client, we planned to stick to a timeframe of between eight and 10 weeks’ production time given the bespoke nature of the job. The flooring then needed to sit in the property for a minimum of four weeks to acclimatise to the new surroundings before being fitted. On this particular project, the customer had tradesmen on site who handled the fitment of the flooring.
How do you blend traditional craftsmanship with the current trends around contemporary design? We are very traditional when it comes to the way we work, however, we incorporate the most up-to-date technologies where necessary. This includes things like the latest tooling to achieve more precise finishes, the floor finishes so that the colour and lustre last as long as possible between treatments, and the adhesives to ensure the flooring stays securely fixed to the subfloor.
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