The National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA) is a proud sponsor of Workcamp Parquet 2021, held this September at Groot-Bijgaarden Castle in Belgium. This year’s event helped to restore the castle’s parquet floor, installed in 1690.
Workcamp Parquet’s mission is to unite wood flooring professionals to exchange knowledge while restoring floors using traditional parquet methods, including hand saws, planes, chisels, and chisels.
“Workcamp Parquet’s contact network spreads throughout Europe to find these wonderful floors in need of conservation and restoration,” explains Rene Caran, WorkCamp Parquet founder. “Working almost exclusively by hand, we almost always use centuries-old techniques with aged and reclaimed materials to conserve and repair floors. If replicas must be produced, it’s by hand, using techniques and even tools from the past.”
“Workcamp Parquet’s contact network spreads throughout Europe to find these wonderful floors in need of conservation and restoration. The opportunity to experience historic and hand-crafted floors from centuries ago doesn’t exist here in the United States so that is my motivation,” explains Lenny Hall, NWFA Regional Instructor, and Workcamp Parquet participant. “The bonus is the relationships I have with an international brotherhood of parqueteurs. Despite any native language barriers, we all speak the same parquet language.”
