Thursday, May 3, 2012

Reclaimed wood flooring


I am in love with our flooring.  We absolutely hare carpeting, so we knew we would be putting down hardwood floors.  We weren't terribly happy with off the shelve Lowes or Home Depot flooring, so we did some research.  I ran across an ad for someone local selling reclaimed wood flooring.  The craftsman we are working with goes around the local area and surrounding states to dismantle old barns and homes to relcaim the lumber.  He then remills old beams and other woods into tongue and groove hardwood flooring.  He is somewhat new to flooring, so we are his first customer outside of friends.

We chose to go with a mixture of red and white oak in the bedrooms and a mixture of maple and beech in the great room and kitchen.  The pieces of wood are beautiful - while remilling the wood, he was able to retain nail holes and saw marks.  Some of the wood has quarter saw marks.  It really looks great.  The flooring is almost an inch thick, so it has some serious strength to it.  Speaking of strength - Scott (our wood guy) told us to go to Lowes or Home Depot and count growth rings on their off the shelf hardwood flooring.  He said to then compare it to the wood he has provided.  We counted nine rings on the oak flooring at Home Depot and we counted approximately 36 on the oak that is going in our house.  That is some old growth lumber with serious strength.  

As with paint, we are concerned with VOCs.  The product we are using the cover our floor is called Rubio Monocoat.  It is a European product and has absolutely zero VOCs.  It is a one coat product.  It is unique in that it actually bonds to the raw wood.  If in the future, the floor gets damaged in some way, we can simply sand the spot and put more Monocoat on it.  Since it only bonds to the raw wood, there will be no lap lines and the oil will simply wipe off the wood that already has oil on it.  It sounds like it should be new technology, but it was developed in Europe soon after World War 2.  

We are so excited with how things are coming along!  Three more weeks until we can call it home :-)