I was riding down the road the other day when The Rolling Stones’ classic, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” came on the radio.
I love the chorus: “You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” That’s a pretty good way to look at things, if you ask me.
As the song played, it got me thinking about a couple we recently helped at Ralph’s Hardwoods. They had fallen in love with the look of hardwood floors made with wood reclaimed from old barns, and they wanted to see what we offered.
It turned out that reclaimed barn was too expensive for their budget. Even so— just as Mick Jagger wisely pointed out—they could still get what they needed.
The look was their real need, and once they understood that, they stopped worrying about using wood actually reclaimed from barns.
One of the reasons many people are drawn to reclaimed barn wood is that it’s skip-sawn, meaning that it still shows the saw blade cuts. That’s how wood was cut back when those old barns were built, and there’s a beautiful natural character to it.
It’s no problem to offer customers that style now, even if the wood isn’t coming from a barn. These skip-sawn floors aren’t authentic, but they have a genuine look.
You can find skip-sawn wood that’s pre-finished, but you’ll have a very limited selection of finishes to choose from. I recommend letting experienced hardwood professionals stain and finish the wood on site. When you’re working with talented experts like we have at Ralph’s Hardwoods, you can get an appearance that’s just as full of character as real reclaimed barn wood.
My point is: Don’t give up on your dream floors because you think they might be out of your price range. Achieving a barn-wood look is just one example of being able to find less-costly ways to get the look you’re after. It’s that way with most hardwood floor styles.
You can’t always get the floors you think you want, but when you visit our showroom, we can show you how to get what you need.
Photo courtesy of gb_packards Thank you for the 1 million views!. Available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.
