The Hugh Lane Gallery

This was an amazing project which we were very proud to take on for Dublin City Council. The Hugh Lane Gallery is renowned for its stunning artworks displays, but it also has stunning herringbone flooring. This Dublin gallery was founded in 1908 and because of how old it is we were nervous to see the condition of the herringbone flooring. These aged herringbone flooring and parquet flooring designs are top of the range when it comes to quality and finish and I would have to say from the time when this Dublin gallery was built the craftsmanship and the level of skill that went into these styled herringbone floors and parquet flooring was second to none, so we were excited to see the work that Dublin city council wanted us to undertake.

It was clear to see just how large this project was when they were first building it and each room that has herringbone flooring had to be at least 150m2, but because of the quality of the herringbone flooring it was able to stand the test of time and it was obvious on how well the parquet flooring wood had been kept over the years and it was great to see the longevity of this herringbone flooring.

On arriving to meet the clients to find out what they wanted us to do, we were brought to an area that was out of the public domain, where they repaired all the paintings and was used for storage. But to my surprise when I walked in, the room was completely laid in a herringbone flooring from front to back. It was still as stunning as the public areas but had a lot of damage. The beauty about herringbone flooring and any type of parquet flooring is if it gets damaged and but it is of good quality, nine times out of ten it can be brought back to its original state.

As we had to hand make up the original herringbone parquet, which was a 30 mm in depth sapele timber, we repaired and refitted many of the original areas of parquet flooring which in turn had to be re-sanded and brought back to match the original floors. We also replaced all the floors in the cafe area with a new solid oak plank flooring. The reason for this was they had a major flood and we were able to provide the full removal of all the plank flooring which was a junker plank flooring and replace it with a new plank flooring. It was unfortunate for this to happen, but as I have said before herringbone flooring is much more superior than plank flooring especially when laid on a clip system and if this had of been herringbone flooring this style of parquet flooring would have only needed a sand and a polish to bring it back to new again and would not of need to be replaced.

After all work were completed in this Dublin based gallery, MM Parquet & Carpentry Ltd had left the job with another happy client and has continued to go from strength to strength in the main Dublin area and greater Dublin county region and we have gone on to complete many more projects for clients in the Dublin area.