Over the years we have been contacted to work in some beautiful old homes, and we have re-finished floors in some homes that were over 100 years old. Sometime however, the floors in an old home are just too far gone to refinish.
Such was the case with the Helm-Blair House. A home that is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1906 and was fully restored and updated in 2007-08. The home is now a rental and you can find out more information about it at ozarkhistoriccabins.com.
Of course the new owners wanted the old pine floors refinished, but there was just too much wear and damage to make the project worthwhile and salvageable. We installed a new 5 inch pine floor over the old floor and the floors turned out great. The whole cabin and experience turned out really nice.
There are about as many kinds of distressed floors as there are individual tastes. We have clients ask about distressed floors all the time, nearly weekly. My most used comment about distressed floors is, “One person’s distressing is another person’s destruction”. A lot of people, in past years myself included, would just cringe at the thought of a distressed or beat up floor. But distressed floors have become very popular in the past few years, and we’ve done our share of them.
They come in every form. From what I would call a “light distressing” which would include some “worm hole” looking areas, a few deep natural looking scratches, and various dents and dings. To a wholesale hand scraping, which we have done quite a bit of, and that has it’s own section on the website. There are saw mark distresses, and what we call “ship’s deck” which is done with a chisel or a gouge, and takes out a pretty good chunk of wood here and there.
I would also include the “reclaimed” wood in this category. We have access to suppliers that have wood that has been reclaimed out of old barns or factories that have a special patina that you just can’t get with what most would call “new wood”. This type of material can get very expensive, mainly just because of supply and demand….or mainly just supply, because there is a very limited quantity of this material around. These types of floors really give the client a floor that is truly unique however.
Over the years we have been contacted to work in some beautiful old homes, and we have re-finished floors in some homes that were over 100 years old. Sometime however, the floors in an old home are just too far gone to refinish.
