Fine Floors: It’s All About the Wood
Flooring has become subject to the whims of fashion. But traditional wood floors were meant to last, and to age gracefully.
Traditional wood floors aging gracefully: repairs, matching new to old, stains, etc.
As much as original hardwood floors
are prized today, they often pose problems that aren’t easy to solve, from burned or missing floorboards to pet-urine stains. In many cases, the damage can be repaired and evidence of past wrongs can be righted. The solution usually involves elbow grease, some serious sleuthing for the right materials, skilled help, or all of the above. Damaged floorboards can be seamlessly replaced, for instance, but finding appropriate wood for an old floor may require looking in some unusual places. Timehonored methods include using wood salvaged from the house itself (check attics and basements for leftover boards, or even rip up a few pieces of the attic floor if it’s a match), and seeking out locally salvaged or reclaimed wood. If your floors are fairly recent by old-house standards or if the repair is a small one, you may be able to feather in newly milled wood from a local lumberyard.
While ¾ "-thick flooring has been standard for centuries, the many variations in wood species, cut, grain, character marks, and fastening methods make it challenging to match new wood to old.
If you’ve pursued the obvious options without success, the next step may be to go to an antique wood specialist. “Several times a week, clients send us photos of flooring they are trying to match,” says Carol Goodwin, president of the Goodwin Company, which reclaims and mills river-recovered heart pine and cypress. “We ask them to send photos of expanses of the floor so that we can see the type and grain of the wood, knot and heart content, color, and character marks such as nail holes, cracks, and checks.”
Putting together a packet of replacement wood means identifying wood of the same species, cut, and intangibles like character, she says. The wood should also be milled the same way, such as strip tongue-and-groove flooring or wide plank. Provided the existing floor is heart pine or cypress of similar age and grain to the wood Goodwin typically reclaims and mills, she and her team can usually match it through trial and error. “We end up counting boards—lengths, the grain, here’s one that’s got a knot, here’s one that’s flat-sawn,” and so on, she says. “Then we come up with a mix from two or three different collections.”
That’s all well and good for restorers with heart-pine floors, but finding a source for wide-plank Eastern white pine for a floor in upstate New York, tongueand-groove white or red oak for one in Ohio, or Douglas fir strip flooring for a house in Seattle will mean seeking out producers of similar wood.
The first step is to identify the wood species in the floor. (Unsure? Show or send samples to a
knowledgeable flooring pro.) Most wood flooring is either plain sawn (also called flat sawn) or quarter sawn. Visually, the difference is dramatic: the growth rings on flat-sawn boards appear as a tangential grain—curved lines running up and down the boards, forming “cathedral arches” in the words of more than one flooring expert, creating a repeating pattern of arching grain, layered one on top of the other along the board.
Quarter-sawn wood produces boards with a vertical grain like pin-striping. The denser the original wood, the tighter the pin-striping, which is why it may be important to match the age of the wood.
Next, identify how the boards are fitted together. The earliest boards were random-width planks laid tightly against one another with square edges, then either face- or blind-nailed. (Truly early floors are fastened to underlying joists with pegs.) Wide planks may also be cut with interlocking tongue-and-groove joints and blind-nailed.
Flooring laid since the second half of the 19th century is usually tongue-andgroove, milled with projecting tongues on one side and mating grooves on the other. As each board is laid, the tongue slides into the groove on the board already in place on the floor to create a tight joint that can be blind-nailed in place.
Once you’ve identified species, cut, and installation type, examine your floors for additional characteristics, such as an unusual color, the presence of knotholes, or “character” like saw-blade marks or insect and nail holes. If you can afford it, you want to buy wood with similar characteristics.
It’s also important to seek out planks or strips that are similar in length and width to your existing floor. Walk into any house built before 1960 with intact floors and you’ll see strip flooring in lengths from 8' to 10'. If the house was built before 1850, the boards could be up to 16' long. Today, a lot of newly milled stock comes in lengths that are much shorter, varying between 5' and 7', or even less. The longer the lengths, the more expensive the wood. That goes for widths, too: wide-plank floor widths today typically vary from 5" to 10". Compare that to the exceptionally wide boards found in antique homes known as “the King’s wood,” which can be up to 24" wide—the center boards flatsawn from an enormous old-growth tree.
When floors are just “slap worn out” (a phrase my father used to apply to old trucks), options include replacement with like wood or a species common in your area. In other circumstances, engineered floors with a top layer of real antique wood will look just as good as solid strip or plank flooring. Seek out versions that are at least 5/8" thick with a wear layer that can withstand multiple sandings.