IT'S a good thing Janet and Bob Barclay have friends who like red wine. Otherwise, these two might not be able to get up off their new bathroom floor.
While Janet provided some modest sipping support, Bob sliced 2,321 wine corks into slim discs, enough to cover the floor of the second-floor bathroom in their home in Ottawa.
Do the math and you end up with 11,605 cork slices of different colours and inscriptions. Many corks pack memories of significant birthdays, family gatherings and a 30th wedding anniversary.
The two laugh over many of the stories, pointing to the specific cork. Along the way, this ebullient man of many talents cut another 360 corks lengthwise, creating a cork baseboard.
Inspiration for the floor came two years ago, during a trip to follow the Tour de France.
"We had been collecting wine corks for years and had several plastic bags filled with them," says Bob, who spent a career as senior conservator for the Canadian Conservation Institute in the federal government's Department of Heritage. This means he carefully restored museum artifacts, while also finding private time to build brass trumpets based on a type designed in the 17th and 18th centuries. He has led international courses on building these trumpets and written award-winning books.
And he has been busy moving walls and rebuilding the family home, where the couple raised four children and now regularly entertains boisterous grandchildren.
Building a cork floor, in comparison, is easy yet also time-consuming for this affable perfectionist, who is happiest in his crowded yet highly organized workshop where a telescope is waiting to be finished and a pristine chassis is one day going to be the base for a fully restored 1921 Morgan.
"We like a glass of red wine with dinner," says Bob, who retired two years ago so he could concentrate on his various hobbies. "Then we got lucky and family and friends gave us corks -- a lot of them."
A trip to the Jackson-Triggs wine areas in southern Ontario also yielded another huge bag.
He spent hours in the basement, first creating a special jig to cut the corks into quarter-inch slices and then a wooden pusher so his fingers wouldn't get near the potentially dangerous saw. There were no mishaps between blade and flesh along the way and soon he had the raw materials to lay the floor in the bathroom they have been renovating.
"It was in a sorry state," says Janet, who is also a social worker and now spends time with grandchildren, sewing and filling her scrapbooks.
Initially, the two looked at commercial cork floors, and in fact they did use a soft cork composite floor after moving walls around on the second floor. Then they decided to do something unique in the bathroom, which now has a new whirlpool tub and a dual-flush toilet.
He laid down a new sub-floor, coated it with a water-based white glue and got down to work, placing each of the cork slices into the floor. He did it section by section, mixing colours and inscriptions. When he came to the end of his cork supply, there was a bare corner. He appealed to friends and more corks arrived. This is when he hand-painted some to add variety.
This was followed by two coats of polyurethane sealant to seal the corks, then the gaps were filled with a sanded tile grout. Five more coats of polyurethane followed to ensure good waterproofing.
"The fans were going and the windows were open," recalls Janet.
"It was smelly," Bob confirms.
The Barclays also added cork detailing to accent tiles around the tub.
"We got the tiles at Home Depot. It was easy," says Bob.
After so many hours over his work table, Bob is now a self-proclaimed expert on wine corks. There is nothing like an old-fashioned cork, says the man, who admits to loathing plastic corks, while tolerating cork composites.
The move to screw cap bottles would put an end to his cork ambitions.
Now, Janet wants a cork tray for their new RV, a 2010 Ford Coachman that is parked in their laneway. They bought it earlier this month and to celebrate, they rented a movie, bought a bottle of wine and slept under the city stars.
Longer summer trips are in the works and by then, they will have a new cork tray for serving a fine glass of red wine.
-- Postmedia News
