CONVENTION CRASHING: Surfaces 2007 expo

Monday, Feb. 12, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

They were perhaps the unhappiest life-size wooden sheep ever built.

Oh sure, their fleece was white as snow, but their black-and-amber eyes were shaded with heavy lids slanting downward. These were sneering teenager sheep that probably chewed cigarettes and cruised for ewe. Ask them what they were rebelling against and no doubt they'd say, "Baa." With attitude.

But just try to cheer them up with a little wholesome musical fun, a few lines from the Beach Boys ("Barbara Ann") - no, don't. The salesmen at the Wools of New Zealand booth will glare at you.

It was hard not to get a little loopy after wandering around all the exciting floor, rug and counter options Thursday at the Surfaces 2007 expo. It was booked for 40,000 people in the Sands Expo Center but it felt like more. A river of people ran between the Venetian's garage and the expo, which took up four gigantic halls.

There was also a lot of wood flooring, much of it with names like "Brazilian cherry" or "Brazilian walnut," species found only in flooring catalogs. Some of this wood is coming out of the Amazon basin, so you could be saving a little piece of the rain forest for yourself, if by "saving" you mean "chopping down and pressure treating."

If you'd feel guilty about something like that but must have wood, there's the option of reclaimed lumber, wood that's been salvaged from demolished buildings. Besides being guilt-free, 100-year-old used wood also has the advantages of being harder and less likely to warp. Also, the stains and scars on it speak of its former life as granary, barn or brewery.

Mountain Lumber of Virginia has managed to buy the old wooden beer vats from the Guinness brewery in Dublin, Ireland. With only 25,000 board-feet available and the stout nostalgia associated with it, the lumber should be pricey even in the pricey world of reclaimed wood. Mountain Lumber won't say what the Guinness price will be, other than that it will be between $25 and $50 per board-foot.

The company expects it to sell briskly, but to a niche market: men.

"The guy doesn't get much of the house, that's usually the boss's, or, uh, the woman's call," salesman Tim Sullivan says. "So it'll maybe be something for the guy's office or den."

Practically everyone at the expo said women decide what to buy. They went around reminding each other. One company had a giant poster up with a J.C. Penney-type model rolling around on a carpet and the slogan, "We have what she wants."

Most of the conventioneers were men.

Oh, that's so original

Troxell USA had a crowd of slack-jawed, wide-eyed men around its booth that was no doubt highly interested in the company's grouting implements and possibly Fabrica and Patty.

The young women without apparent last names, models hired from a talent agency, were wearing the sort of modest, demure outfit that a streetwalker would catch a cold in. In a nod to the company's fine products, they were also wearing neoprene kneepads.

Over and over, leering middle-aged guys wearing polo shirts stretched to capacity would come up and say, "Are you gonna demonstrate those kneepads?"

Patty and Fabrica, who looked like they had only heard this line 8 million or so times, would smile without any trace of irony and say, "Oh, well, we could, but why don't we put them on you and then you could demonstrate them?"

And soon enough, the guys who didn't mumble and walk away were soon supplicant in front of the stiletto-heeled women.

From the makers of 'Blood Remover'

At another booth on the other side of the downstairs hall, the guys were sniffing miniature toilets in the name of science.

The product being demonstrated was called Urine-Off (slogan: "The name says it all") by its makers, Bio-Pro Research of Sarasota, Fla.

Except the demonstration was a bit of a sham, because they were using stunt urine, a mixture of ammonia and yellow dye that might smell authentic to us but wouldn't fool even the world's dumbest Labrador retriever. But salesman Mark Nelson assured me it works against the real thing, even old and dry stuff because of the cleaner's urine-hungry enzymes.

"The bacteria comes in and eats it up just like Pac Man," he says.

Product: Frankcow on your floor

Leather rugs consisting of stitched-together squares of cattle hide with the hair still on them. Available from Global Accents Inc., which sells them to stores for $1,000.

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Salesmen Wanted by High Commissions

- sign on the desk of a Taiwanese manufacturer of wood inlays

Overheard

"You know Porter? He came around in his wheelchair and he was harassing us, saying he's got a new factory, new equipment, orders and blah, blah, blah."

- passing salesman