Considering a cheap, rustic wood floor

[db4570]

We need to put a floor in our cabin, and I'm looking at options. It's a rustic cabin, and the hardwood floors I've looked at look a little too perfect and precise and suburban, not to mention being expensive.

I was in a restaurant a couple weeks ago that had a really cool floor that I thought would look great in our place. I talked to the owner, and she said it had been painted, and the sanded it down. I asked what was filling the gaps between the boards, and she said paint, although I wonder if it is actually some sort of grout or putty or tar. Hopefully the pictures show this OK.

I like the wide grout lines, but they're not necessary. Mostly I just like the big pine plank look.

So this got me thinking. Why not buy the cheapest big pine boards I can find, which are just generic 2x12 construction lumber, run them through a planer to square up the top edges, and nail 'em down? I don't mind exposed nail heads, and actually think it could add to the rustic look. I figure with all the money I save, I'll more than pay for a nice planer.

Am I nuts? What's wrong with this idea?

Thanks!

David

[Redoverfarm]

David not real sure what I am looking at in the pictures of the flooring.  At first glance it appears that the joint is wider than a convientional joint.  It looks to me to have a beveled edge and is a 1X6 or dressed to 3/4 X 5(finished width).  Not real sure what is in the beveled portion or the board joint but I doubt that it is grout.  Too much movement in the wood to keep it stable and not work loose.  Might have been a dark paint or dark stain applied to the beveled area and when sanded it would remain it's color because it was below the surface that was sanded. 

[glenn kangiser]

We have several historic buildings with pine floors over 100 years old in our town

[db4570]

I am leaning toward avoiding the beveled edge, just to keep things simple, and easy to sweep.

I guess my main question is: Is planing down long 2x12s, to 5/4 or so, a good plan? It seems an obvious source of good quality kiln dried pine in long wide boards, but I wonder why I've never heard of anyone making a floor this way before.

Thanks for the input!

David

[Redoverfarm]

The main reason that you don't see that much being done is that it will open up leaving gaps between.  That why they came up with the tounge and groove.  Also using that wide of a board it will most likely cup.  The tounge and groove also makes for a more rigid floor whereas the pieces move together rather than seperately to a certain extent.

[ScottA]

Here's a pic of the floor in my cabin under construction.



The boards are white pine 1x12's.



Here's what it looks like finished.

[MushCreek]

I'm planning a rustic floor myself, but it will be red oak, milled from the trees that have to come down for my build. I'm going to face-nail mine with forged nails from Tremont nail. They look like the real deal. A bit more money, but if you're going to see the heads, might as well make it look vintage. The 200 y/o house I grew up in had floorboards up to 14" wide. They had shrunk, of course, and some enterprising homeowner pounded thin rope in between them to keep the cold air out. I thought it was pretty cool, especially as how it was a whaling captain's house. They probably had lots of rope laying around.

I've always wondered what would happen if you pre-finished the boards on ALL sides before installing, especially the cut ends. Seems like you could greatly slow down the changes in humidity to limit the swelling and warping.

[Don_P]

First off flooring is normally dried to 8-10%, framing lumber typically is 19% so if you can sticker and stack it indoors, preferably through a heating season it will help with shrinkage and distortion. Shrinkage is the same across the width of your foot wide section of floor whether it is covered by a single 2x12 or three 1x4's, the difference is the width of the cracks. If the shrinkage is 1/4" per foot of width then the gap at the sides of the 12" planks will be 1/4". If that same 1/4" of shrinkage is divided among 3 gaps each gap will be under 1/8". That is one of the main reasons for strip flooring, the gaps are smaller during seasonal movement. Softwoods as a general rule move less than hardwoods. I would try to avoid pieces that contain the heart.

You can put a wing cutter in a router and rout a groove on both sides of the board. Then planed splines can be inserted in the grooves while assembling.

I worked on an old house some years ago where we saved the old flooring, cleaned it up and reused it for ceiling and wainscotting. I first tried to clean the grooves with a pressure washer. I could eat the wood away faster than the dirt packed into them so switched to screwdrivers and finally a homemade grooving plane. Each winter as the floor shrank and opened debris would sift into the gaps, the next summer the wood would swell and pack that layer of dirt in, year after year. The floor had a look similar to what you posted.

For history buffs;
During the colonial period the crown claimed all white pine greater than 24" diameter. In New England there were patriots with 24"+ floorboards.
http://www.wearehistoricalsociety.org/pineriot.htm
http://www.nelma.org/Page-19.html
I've heard people say the AT trail mark came from the kings broad arrow and others who have said they were unrelated, don't know.

[db4570]

Thanks for all the responses, everyone.

ScottA, that's a great looking floor; exactly how I imagined doing mine. Has it been stained in the finished shot?

I may pursue this framing lumber scheme. It definitely seems to be the cheapest wood out there.

I'm wondering what the biggest gap is I could expect between the boards? I don't mind a bit of a gap, but 1/4" seems huge.

I like the spline in the groove idea. I assume this is to try to keep everything level. It isn't glued in like a biscuit, but just pressed in, yes?

Any other ideas and opinions appreciated.

David

[Don_P]

Yes the spline is just pressed in. Any time you try to glue this much area together it is going to have to account for seasonal movement somewhere. It will then stat tight on several joints and all the accumulated shrinkage will show up in bigger gaps where a weak glue joint or spline lets go.

this is a link to the shrinkulator, a shrinkage calculator. There is also more reading there on what goes on with wood and moisture. http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/shrinkulator.htm

The ways to reduce gapping are to use woods with low shrinkage values, start dry, use narrower stock and avoid major humidity swings. Of those starting dry is the most important.

[jb52761]

There is an historic home here on the campus of Milikin University. Open for tours every month. The original owner/builders  wife was a frugal woman. Many of the wood floors are actually wide rough plank, and the lines separating them were drawn on with a pencil. The tour guide explains this when you are in the home. You might be able to see them on their website..  milikinhomestead.com     or something like that. I'll look for site and post again. It's in Decatur, Illinois. The intercom system in the home quite unique too. Copper or steel pipes running through the place that you simply talk into like a phone. Sound travels quite well. Interesting.

[jb52761]

Here it is.....

http://old.millikin.edu/millikinhomestead/

[db4570]

A couple developments...

I chatted with a friend who has quite a bit of experience with fine woodworking and old house construction. He made a point that the lumber yard 2x hem fir is a different animal than old style pine boards. He feels the new stuff will be too soft and unstable for heavy duty use as a floor. He contends that older pine was slow-growing, and much sturdier. He makes a point.

I have also chatted with the family member that built the place, and he described to me what is currently there now. All I can see is a layer of crummy looking tar paper, but he says that is covering nice thick t&g planks. All I have to do is peel off the tar paper, dissolve the tar that was sticking it down, sand the heck out of it, and I should have a nice solid floor. Sounds like a grueling job, but hopefully better/cheaper than laying another floor on top of it.

I have some time to figure all this out, since I'm not doing anything with it until spring, anyway.

Keep the ideas and suggestions coming.

David

[dablack]

In college I bought a small house that was built in 1942.  There was wood floor through out the house.  In the den/living room it had been covered with carpet back in the late 60s (same carpet was still there....it was pink) and in the kitchen/dining room it had been covered with linolium in th early 70s.  I got a big scraper (brand name Big Mut) and tried to scrape up the linolium.  I could get the top half of it but not the lower tar paper bottom.  Then I got a big heat gun and slowly started getting it off the floor.  A square foot took about an hour.  It was rough going.  Being a college student, I had left a wet towel on the floor over night.  The next morning I picked up the towel and found that the tar paper and released from the floor under it.  I don't know if the moisture went through the paper and make the wood under it expand, therefore breaking the bond between paper and floor, or if the water some how disolved some of the adhesive.  I don't know but it worked.  Every night I would put two soaking wet towels down and in the morning I could pull up about 60% of the tar paper under them.  The rest of the junk was just stuck on too well.  I had a guy come and take a look at the rest of the floor to see how much it was going to cost to refinish it (I didn't do everything myself back then).  He said with his machine he could get up the rest of that junk stuck to the floor.  I gave him the go ahead.  Sure enough he ate right through it to clean floor.  So, give the wet towel trick a try (use hot HOT water) and then try a BIG drum sander.  You might gum up the paper or go right through it.  Who knows. 

I will tell you that having that nice real wood floor ruined me on fake wood flooring for the rest of my life. 

Austin

[astidham]

Here it is.....

http://old.millikin.edu/millikinhomestead/

My wife is a Millikin Grad.

[Yonderosa]

Oak is pretty inexpensive, (way) less than $2 a foot around here especially if you don't need a whole bunch.  Just leave it unsanded for the rustic look. 

[considerations]

"Not real sure what is in the beveled portion or the board joint but I doubt that it is grout."

Might be oakum; tarred rope like shipbuilders use to make a watertight seal between wooden hull planks.  It certainly would flex with the changes in moisture.  Just a guess.

[pocono_couple]

I cast my vote with considerations..  the joints in the pictures that you provided of the floor  look a lot like a caulked joint that ship builders would have used in the old days ( and still do in wooden planked hulls).     If you end up putting pine down ( not at all uncommon in older homes in the northeast)  you might consider using square cut nails.   they add a nice touch and were frequently used for face nailing pine floors 150+ years ago.    check out this site   http://www.tremontnail.com/

[considerations]

Oh, and I think that sanders and nails might not get along well.  My 2x6 T&G floor is nailed, but the nails are down in the T&G part, not on the surface.  I plan to sand and finish.

[2zwudz]

 ScottA
Is your floor a 1x12 pine plank or is it a t&g floor? How did you install/secure it?
Thanks
Mark

[UK4X4]

150 years ago................we still use those nails in the UK !

usually only for the floor boards. We call them cut nails

I'n my old house I sanded the orginal planks, replaced those that needed it, from rescued old planking from the recycling place.

I did not stain or varnish mine, I used diluted linseed oil, and 1-2 time's a year re-applied it, that kept the boards oil'd and in the same size as when put down

Issue is if the wife likes stilletos you will have little pockmarks appearing !.

That goes with the new T&G too, there are some new super tough varnish or resin type seals available but I prefered the natural dull look

and easy maintenance

[MushCreek]

Someone on here (I apologize that I don't remember who) suggested that if you want to face nail with cut nails, put the floor down first with hidden finish nails toenailed into the edges. Sand the floor, then do your face nailing and finishing. Of course, you can't sand it well if you want to re-finish in the future, but I don't care about that. The kind of women I prefer only like a stiletto in a bar fight, and their only skirt is to keep the wind out from under their trailer!

[Don_P]

 
That would work. We had one homeowner that went with exposed nails and no sanding, just laid the planks and finished it. After the dogs had done about a decade of damage he sank the nails as Considerations described, sanded and refinished it. There were a few shiners but it's all just part of the character.

I have a neat technical paper on early cut nails by Chris Howe, a retired engineer in Australia.  This is a little bit of the history on nailmaking, which at least to me is the interesting part;
Early cut nails, especially in the colonies were made from things like barrel hoops. The hoop had been foundry forged, usually in a rolling mill and because of various impurities had a grain that ran along the length of the strip. The early cut nails were cut across the strip and so across the grain. They had the typical blunt end. This produced a nail that was unclenchable, it would break before it bent and the blunt end woked fine for softwoods but in many hardwoods the driving force required to penetrate the harder wood meant the nail buckled and snapped before it would penetrate. A hand wrought nail with a fine point and grain running the length of the nail was required for latches, shutters, boats and doors (clinching the nail, making it "dead", held the planks firmly against withdrawal),

Something I've seen in cut nails from the 1800's is the delamination of the nail into layers when it is bent and often in service. The cutting sheet was produced by rolling. The rollers had to be cooled and produced different rates of crystallization in the iron, so it set up fracture planes in the sheet. These nails look sort of like a bobby pin, with two "legs" when they are stressed. The fine grained surface and coarser textured core is a sign of old rolled iron whatever the use.

American and Swedish iron were imported by Britain in large quantity for nail production because of the superior ores they came from. We had the pig, the British had the machinery in the early days. Jefferson imported one of the earliest nail making machines in this country, it had been a wintertime farm job and blacksmith trade up until then. We were hurting for nails by 1812.

With the advent of the Bessemer converter malleable steel was possible in large quantities. Up until that time the cut nail was king. The wire nail then came along. Strong, reliable and ductile it quickly took over. A newspaper from one cut nail capitol, Wheeling, WV, from the period stated "So far as Wheeling is concerned, it would have been better if the Englishman had died before he had invented this process" By the turn of the century the superior wire nail had largely replaced the cut nail for most uses.

edit;
"In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker." - T.Jefferson, Letter to Jean Nicolas Démeunier, April 29, 1795

[John Raabe]

Now we know...

Thanks for posting that interesting history Don.