Hardwood Floors?

[webby3650]

Just for the record, no woodstoves are approved to go over a wood floor. I was just fooling around.

 

[NortheastAl]

Here is a better view. It's actually porcelain tile! I wanted it to look like hardwood. I guess it worked!

Fooled me!

 

[NortheastAl]

Here is a better view. It's actually porcelain tile! I wanted it to look like hardwood. I guess it worked!

Was almost going to call for a wood ID on it.

 

[ScotO]

Thanks! They were a LOT of work

I hear you there! I had to chuckle when I saw your pics as mine are similar. While our wood wasn't wet (it was in dry storage from the time the house was demo-ed until we bought the wood) it wasn't very pretty stuff. All of the T/G was originally done with a hand plane. It was weathered and very rustic, when we pulled in to the seller's place my wife was like "did you seriously pay money for that wood?"



Now, she loves it! It was originally flooring in an 1840's farmhouse, it had the old square cut nails in it. I have over 9 hours with a metal detector and pliers pulling out those old rusty nails. After we planed it and re-milled the tongue and grooves, I installed it and put black wood filler in the original nail holes....then sanded it all down. It looks fantastic with those old square nail holes in it.....really gives the room character. I left it sit in the room (with the NZ3000 burning) for over a month, to acclimate it to the room humidity.





I love your hearth room, looks very cozy! I enjoyed going through your pics on your cottage overhaul. Keep up the good work!

 

[ScotO]

Here is a better view. It's actually porcelain tile! I wanted it to look like hardwood. I guess it worked!

I figured you were gonna surprise us! My brother used that stuff in his master bathroom and I REALLY had to look at it to see it was tile!

Love the look of your hearth, Webby!

 

[pyroholic]

In my experience pre-finished hardwood has a greater tendency to shrinkage and buckling. A finish-in-place floor is just sealed up better and seems to move less. Whatever you decide, acclimate, acclimate, and acclimate some more before laying. The week I've seen recommended on some products is not enough sometimes. I say a month if possible and get out your MM.

 

[clemsonfor]

I would agree on a month as like I said I have cupping. I waited several weeks I think?

On tractor by net one of the main contributing members has a thread building a house for his parents. He is using that wood tile throughout the home.

 

[rideau]

When I built my home in the seventies I had all the wood milled for the floors and trim. All floors are 6 inch wide length boards (16 feet long). White oak first floor, teak in the bathrooms, cherry second floor, maple third floor, all stairs and halls white oak. Had the wood in the home a good ,long time before it was installed. Tongue and groove. The carpenter who installed it loved the wood, and cut ovals into all the ends and installed biscuits on the ends, board to board. Then the floor was finished with six coats of poly, well saded between each coat. It's installed over two layers of 3/4 inch plywood, over 2 x 12 doug fir joists.

Never made a better decision. The floor has been great, no problems with shrinkage or movement. The cherry has darkened beautifully with the years. I left all the wood natural color. The finish has withstood much abuse. And every day that I sweep the floors I am thankful that there is no carpeting. Amazing the amount of dust, wheaton undercoat, leaves and other debris that accumulates every day on the floor. Easy to keep the place looking great.

The amazing thing was that at the time I priced tile, wood flooring, and carpeting. Turned out cheaper than any of those was to get the wood I wanted milled as I wanted (I designed the knives for the trim) by Condon's in Westchester, NY, and delivered to Southern Ontario and installed and finished was less expensive than any of the other options. Don't know whether that would be true today.

Anyway, I love my floors and have no problem with shrinkage during heating season.

 

[clemsonfor]

NOPE carpet is way cheaper today, unless you go crazy then you can get entry level wood for that price or less.

It still blows my mind to see folks spend crazy money like $8-12/ft on engineered fake wood when real wood is way less than that?

But a girl here at work has a brother who installs HW floors in the twin cities in Minisoata. He gets $15ft and he thinks thats not enough I think if i could make that kind of money doing that i would quit my day job around here! The get $3-5ft around here i guess depending upon the job, and its not that hard of a job to do yourself.

I think my redoak that i laid in the room thats now cupped i paid like $2.70/ft for it and then i finished it with like 5-7 coats of varthane with one day between coats and lightly sanded with like 300grit paper between every other one.

 

[Ashful]

Question to you guys that have hardwood flooing. We live in a raised ranch in CT (split level), with stove insert in lower level. Just ripped up vinyl floors in kitchen, and laminate in dining room. These rooms sit directly above the insert. Trying to decide between hardwood floors, or engineered floors. How much do your hardwood floors shrink during the winter while running the stove? Our house gets very dry, where we have to run a humidifyer in our bedroom at night, and i'm worried that the gaps between the flooring will be way too much for me.

Just saw this, and didn't bother reading all the replies, so probably a lot of repeat of what's already been said. I've owned houses with hardwood from 2" width to 8" width, and pine from 6" width to 20" width. I've laid my fair share of yellow pine and doug fir flooring, as well.

You should first understand that wood primarily expands and contracts tangentially to the growth rings. In other words, the "rings per inch" count does not change seasonally. This means that if you have quarter sawn or vertical grain lumber, its width is pretty much constant, year-round. Our forefathers -- who had the luxury of much more plentiful and less expensive large timber -- knew this, and this is why a lot of old flooring is vertical grain / quarter sawn. It varies in thickness throughout the year, but not so much in width.

If buying new flooring today, unfortunately, you're going to deal with a lot of plain-sawn (flat-sawn) lumber. It will vary in width, the exact numbers varying heavily with species, your local climate, and whether you use AC vs. opening the windows in humid summer weather. If you keep your house shut up with the AC in the summer and heat in the winter, the effect is minimized.

Here in eastern PA, I'm used to seeing less than 1/8" of yearly movement on a 5-1/4" width (~2% variation) planks of plain-sawn yellow pine. I see FAR less on my old growth rift-sawn (45'ish degree to growth rings) doug fir floors, definitely less than 1/16" on an 8" plank (< 1%).

It still blows my mind to see folks spend crazy money like $8-12/ft on engineered fake wood when real wood is way less than that?

Wood is cheaper, but installation and finishing are much, much more. I can lay 6" T&G in a 12' x 18' bedroom in a day. That even includes under-cutting door casings, etc. Takes me several days to sand and finish, which means several return trips for a flooring contractor, if you're not doing it yourself.

What burns me up, as a recent home shopper, is folks advertising their crappy Home Depot grade pre-finished engineered garbage as "hardwood floors", when selling a home. Should be illegal! There's a reason hardwood floors were considered an expensive luxury by previous generations... they are. (Rant off)

 

[eclecticcottage]

I hear you there! I had to chuckle when I saw your pics as mine are similar. While our wood wasn't wet (it was in dry storage from the time the house was demo-ed until we bought the wood) it wasn't very pretty stuff. All of the T/G was originally done with a hand plane. It was weathered and very rustic, when we pulled in to the seller's place my wife was like "did you seriously pay money for that wood?"

View attachment 106994 View attachment 106995 View attachment 106996

Now, she loves it! It was originally flooring in an 1840's farmhouse, it had the old square cut nails in it. I have over 9 hours with a metal detector and pliers pulling out those old rusty nails. After we planed it and re-milled the tongue and grooves, I installed it and put black wood filler in the original nail holes....then sanded it all down. It looks fantastic with those old square nail holes in it.....really gives the room character. I left it sit in the room (with the NZ3000 burning) for over a month, to acclimate it to the room humidity.

View attachment 106997 View attachment 106998 View attachment 106999

View attachment 107000 View attachment 107001

I love your hearth room, looks very cozy! I enjoyed going through your pics on your cottage overhaul. Keep up the good work!

Ha, I've watched your threads before too. I think we discussed floors before you found yours.

At least we got ours free, I figured out the cost but I can't recall what it was. Maybe $200 finished including the gas to get it? Plus we got the siding and 2x4's. And we were lucky-the person who took down the garage was very intent on rebuilding it so he denailed each piece while taking it down. We wanted rustic/shabby/worn cottage look. Before I found this, we considered barnwood, cheap pine (which would wear quick), hemlock (rough cut so we'd have to cut the T&G and plane) as well as pallet wood. It had to be cheap and wood-I hate carpet and tile and although we put in laminate at our rental, I wasn't sold on it. We found pretty decent stuff for them though, it was only like .79 a sq ft (plus pad) and it's a nice light oak. The #1 must have (for us personally to even consider using it) was it had to be individual planks vs those rectangles where you see a seam every few feet. Looks pretty dang good-we found one absolutely AWESOME version at mr seconds, it was a rustic cherry with a worn paint look. We decided it was a bit too much for a rental though, it would have limited the tenant base.

Funny enough, our floors in the rest of the cottage were never meant to be exposed having been installed in the era of linoleum. I think the original owners would be a bit confused by our decision to leave it exposed rather than recovering it after removing the worn out faux brick which had been covered by "plank style" peel and stick "wood" (which would have been ok if they hadn't laid them end to end rather than staggering them, leading to a seam which ran from side to side every 3'). Well, except the hall, which is actually barn loft flooring that happened to almost exactly match the stuff in the other rooms by some sort of luck!

 

[clemsonfor]

in my farm house, not what your picturing, but a normal house built in the late 40s early 50s to live in as cheap as possible, it has linolium sheet or glue down squares. In the "living room" which is now the wife n is room there we tore out the original carpet and left the original pine subfloor to be exposed.

 

[firefighterjake]

NOPE carpet is way cheaper today, unless you go crazy then you can get entry level wood for that price or less.

It still blows my mind to see folks spend crazy money like $8-12/ft on engineered fake wood when real wood is way less than that?

But a girl here at work has a brother who installs HW floors in the twin cities in Minisoata. He gets $15ft and he thinks thats not enough I think if i could make that kind of money doing that i would quit my day job around here! The get $3-5ft around here i guess depending upon the job, and its not that hard of a job to do yourself.

I think my redoak that i laid in the room thats now cupped i paid like $2.70/ft for it and then i finished it with like 5-7 coats of varthane with one day between coats and lightly sanded with like 300grit paper between every other one.

We actually went with engineered wood in the living room . . . partly because we got a deal on it at the local salvage chain store up this way and partly because our ceilings are so low that my wife wanted to keep the flooring as thin as possible. Honestly, it looks and has held up well . . . but then again we take off our footwear in the house. When we get ready to build our retirement home I suspect we'll go with regular, pre-finished floors . . . but the ceilings may be a bit higher as well.

 

[clemsonfor]

We actually went with engineered wood in the living room . . . partly because we got a deal on it at the local salvage chain store up this way and partly because our ceilings are so low that my wife wanted to keep the flooring as thin as possible. Honestly, it looks and has held up well . . . but then again we take off our footwear in the house. When we get ready to build our retirement home I suspect we'll go with regular, pre-finished floors . . . but the ceilings may be a bit higher as well.

I have 8ft ceiling s like probably 70% of people out there. That's been a stock size for I think 70 ish years till recently and course back in the day. But. If she or you can tell the difference I'm room height of a 1/2" your way better eye than me. That's assuming u get elcheapo 1/4 instead of a thicker half inch or 5/8 engineered. Mine are 3/4 so were talking a diff in height of 1/2 to 1/8" I. Know I could no tell that without a tape.

 

[eclecticcottage]

Huh, found a pic of the awesome laminate. It's historic cherry laminate flooring from kronoswiss:

 

[firefighterjake]

I have 8ft ceiling s like probably 70% of people out there. That's been a stock size for I think 70 ish years till recently and course back in the day. But. If she or you can tell the difference I'm room height of a 1/2" your way better eye than me. That's assuming u get elcheapo 1/4 instead of a thicker half inch or 5/8 engineered. Mine are 3/4 so were talking a diff in height of 1/2 to 1/8" I. Know I could no tell that without a tape.

7 foot 4 inches here . . . not quite sure why as this seems an odd height to me. Honestly, I didn't think an extra 1/2 to 3/4 inch would make a large difference, but my wife was pretty adamant and since the price was decent and the engineered wood looked fine (and the likelihood of us having to refinish this is pretty slim -- I think the paperwork said it could be refinished once or twice if needed and that was it) I didn't squawk too much about going with the engineered vs. regular wood.

 

[Ashful]

How old is the house? Most old (1700's) houses around here have second floor ceilings at or around 7'0". Most of these houses did not have second floor ceilings when new, and they didn't feel as low and confining with the open joists.

Unfortunately, the open joists were a sign of limited funds, not style, and so they were usually covered by a later generation.

 

[clemsonfor]

Wow typing on my phone produces was more errors than I normally allow! And as bad as it sounds I don't proofread or ho back and correct most stuff nor try to use complete and avoid run on sentences. Sure it makes me look like I dropped out of HS unlike reality were I hold post bachelor degrees!!Oh well.

 

[firefighterjake]

How old is the house? Most old (1700's) houses around here have second floor ceilings at or around 7'0". Most of these houses did not have second floor ceilings when new, and they didn't feel as low and confining with the open joists.

Unfortunately, the open joists were a sign of limited funds, not style, and so they were usually covered by a later generation.

1976 . . . again . . . it puzzles me why they went with the shorter ceilings . . . maybe they got a better deal on short lumber.