We are hoping by this winter to install new or reclaimed flooring in our kitchen. Our last house had southern yellow heart pine flooring that we liked for the look and was pretty durable. I had re-finished it and put 4 coats of poly on it when we bought the house. It needed re-finishing once in the 20 years. The floor in this old 1875 farmhouse is not too level. I can remove the old lino, 1/4" plywood and original flooring to get to the subfloor. I am wondering if anyone has a particular wood they are happy with. We are going for a classic farmhouse look. No engineered flooring or pre-finished for the kitchen. It will take a beating and I want to be able to re-finish it down the road if needed. I am curious about the width too. I'd like a wide plank floor versus the narrow flooring in the rest of the house.
Will you surface reclaimed wood? Or look for relatively flat surfaced boards? Face nail or would you T & G the edges? I like the plugged face nailed look myself. You always do great work Jon, so I’ll be following this thread for sure!
I have planed reclaimed heart pine in the last house in an upstairs hall renovation. Pulling the angled flooring nails was a PITA. Using reclaimed is a possibility, but spendy. Most likely t & g. Square edge would probably not lay flat. The wood stove will be in the kitchen, so humidity and air temp will fluctuate. Pegged would be good. Rose head square nails would be gooder aesthetically. If I only knew where to get square nails... FB market place has all sorts of sawn planks from local guys with band mills. I'll need some to follow my own thread.
These are local in stock options. Red pine, which I like a lot. Heart pine. Had it in the last house. Liked it a lot. Fir, ok but not a fan of the vertical grain.
Reclaimed oak for durability. We have a guy that resaws barn beams into flooring nearby. Does the T&G too. We used random width in our living room in our 1860's farmhouse. I'll try and get some pics.
I have 3/4"x5" solid hickory with natural finish in most of my house now....still need to do another 250 sq ft to finish out a couple bedrooms. It is hard stuff....holds up well. The great thing about a natural finish is if it gets dinged up there's more hickory underneath.
I remember your pics of the flooring and it looked great. I agree on solid flooring. The kitchen will take a beating. Stove hearth is going to be Vermont slate.
And it looks awesome...tough as nails too! In our kitchen I actually used a laminate that is meant to look like wide planks...Boston Plank I think it was called...price was right on it, good thing too, as the floor was the last part of the remodel and the budget was almost toast.
We did hickory in our farm house. We wanted the color variation and the knots. It’s the second grade so if you wanted less knots you could get the higher grade. We finished with a oil based clear poly and love it. It’s super hard , we have 4 dogs , 3 kids , and the in-laws all in the house. So far it’s holding up very well. We did the whole hose in it except the bathrooms we did in tile.
My FIL built his kitchen cabinets from hickory...so hard he had to predrill for the screws...and still snapped some off! Looks great though! Love the floor!
As others noted, lots of options. Floating looks like wood flooring, tile that looks like wood planks, etc. In my old house I installed hand scraped wide Brazilian Teak flooring that I really liked. If you look at the Janka scale its about twice as hard as Hickory. Tough to cut, but its very durable with a cool grain and color pattern. It wasn't all that expensive either, and with about 5-5.5" planks, it went down pretty quickly.
Preparing for a wood stove install estimate next week and I got into a corner where an old cabinet was taken out. It looks like 3 1/4" wide maple. Looks like some birdseye grain too. This may turn into a salvage operation. I'll have to take a 1/3 of the floor up to level it. The plywood is nailed every 4", most likely with underlayment nails on the perimeter. There will be a lot of small holes. The color looks good too. No planing to get to raw wood. We don't mind character...
