Reclaimed Wood Flooring in Ann Arbor

Barn oak comes out with nail holes, saw marks and the patina that a century or more of wind, rain and cold leaves on old barn wood. Chestnut is rarer. The Wood Database records that the chestnut blight of the early 1900s killed over three billion American chestnut trees, which made the lumber scarce. "Wormy" chestnut, with insect holes from the dead standing trees, usually comes out of old barns.

Know what you're getting with each. Chestnut is stable (6.7 percent tangential shrinkage, lower than oak's) but soft at 540 lbf on the Janka scale, so it dents. Barn wood carries risks of its own. Hardwood Floors Magazine warns that old red barn paint was commonly lead-based, and that sellers who skip testing put that lead back into houses. Sanding painted wood in a pre-1978 setting falls under the EPA's lead rules (see hardwood floor restoration).

Heart pine is the heartwood of longleaf pine, milled from the beams and floors of old factories and warehouses. The Wood Database says salvaged longleaf heartwood "is in strong demand as premium flooring," and it rates the wood at 870 lbf on the Janka scale, well short of oak. Its tangential shrinkage is 7.5 percent, a bit less than red oak.

Expect dents from dropped pans and dog claws. Some timbers had other lives first. Railroad ties and bridge timbers were often soaked in creosote or pentachlorophenol, which Hardwood Floors Magazine calls known carcinogens, so ask what the source structure was. Factory and warehouse wood can also hold chemicals from what the building was used for.

Remilled boards are resawn, planed and given new tongue-and-groove, so they install like ordinary flooring with an old-wood face. Before any blade touches them, a responsible mill checks each piece by hand for metal and pulls it, since a buried nail can ruin a saw blade. Wood Floor Business says reclaimed lumber should be kiln-dried to 6 to 9 percent moisture before milling, which also kills wood-boring insects. All that sorting and cutting is why a Hardwood Floors Magazine writer puts the loss at 40 to 65 percent from raw plank to finished floor. A well-milled product should then install with an ordinary 5 to 7 percent waste.

Surface-only boards keep the original face: saw marks, patina, even old paint ghosts. They aren't sanded flat after install. One reclaimed specialist in Wood Floor Business notes that makes subfloor prep "extremely important." Some contractors just buff and finish them, and the NWFA's technical staff suggests going over the floor with a Tampico brush on a buffer to remove loose splinters. Some old boards are too hard and brittle to nail without splitting, and some lack end-matching. Ask how the installer plans to fasten the lot you've picked.

Reclaimed boards are also the best match when an old floor needs patching, such as a wall that's come out or a floor register that's moved. In our view, salvaged boards of the same species and width blend better than fresh-cut stock, because they've already aged. The new pieces get woven in with staggered joints, then the whole floor is sanded and finished together. That blending work is covered on our hardwood floor repair page.

The salvaged boards still need to read close to the old floor on a moisture meter before they go in (the limits are on our hardwood floor installation page). Watch the finish too. Tannin-rich oak next to old iron nails and water can stain bluish-gray, which matters when a waterborne finish goes over boards full of old nail holes.