Vintage Heart of Pine

Although we weren't able to save the downstairs hardwood floors - they had no sub-floor and they had been heavily damaged when covered over with not-so-great wood floors at some point in the past - we are planning to save and refinish the upstairs original heart of pine varying width wood floors.  They will be beautiful with a little sanding and refinishing.

One challenge, however, is that there are a lot of areas that are new upstairs, without existing hardwood flooring, so we needed to figure out a way to fill in the gaps.  The game room is a good example - half of the room is brand new - part of the new addition - without any existing floors, the other half is original with original wood flooring intact.

New hardwood will not match, so we found ourselves in the market for reclaimed heart of pine floors.  Fortunately, ET Moore is just the place to go in our area. Located in a nondescript area of Richmond, one would never know what was located inside!  ET Moore has a showroom, multiple warehouses and processing buildings, and acres of neat reclaimed finds from old warehouses and buildings in the Northeast and beyond.  Here's a few shots of this fascinating place:

After reviewing pictures of our existing flooring to match it up, we had a tour of the place and then selected reclaimed heart of pine for our upstairs flooring.  This flooring was delivered last week and is sitting in the house, acclimating, at the moment:

A note about acclimation:  it was news to me that one does not just immediately go about installing hard wood floors as soon as the materials are delivered.  To avoid warping, expansion, and shrinkage, hardwoods need to sit in the climate in which they will be installed for a period of 2 to 4 weeks or more.  And, for best results, you should not rush this process...at all.  To that end, we've had our HVAC system up and running full force for a while now.  (The air conditioning is an added bonus when working in the house now!).  Not pictured is the nifty "moisture meter" that provides readings of the new wood and existing floors.  Once those two readings are a close match, the flooring can be installed upstairs in the areas that don't have existing hardwoods and any damaged areas can be pieced in.  After installation, the entire upstairs floor will be sanded and then covered in a beautiful finish coat to show off the beautiful grain of the heart of pine.  For now, the wood is acclimating comfortably...!