Using reclaimed hardwood in homes has gained popularity for its sustainability and ability to bring character to any space. When you use reclaimed hardwood in a room, it elevates the space by bringing with it an enduring history – giving it an intrinsic value.
Here are innovative ways to use reclaimed hardwood for a floor:
Choose wood with interesting backstories
When you’re proud of your home, you love sharing its story with your visitors. Your kitchen backsplash tiles may have been from a trip overseas, or your porch swing is the same one from your childhood home in the countryside. When you use reclaimed wood for your flooring, there’s almost always an interesting story behind it. So while there’s a trend in using reclaimed wood for homes, there’s also a trend in choosing old wood with the most interesting backstories.
Imagine telling people that your floors came from an 18th-century distillery or an old bowling alley. Back in the day, bowling lanes were made of pine or maple. And while bowling lanes appear to still have wooden lanes, the truth is that those are mostly synthetic lanes.
Mix it up
The trend in using reclaimed wood for new developments makes sourcing the material challenging. Some companies recover and sell reclaimed lumber. Some hardwood floor designers will go as far as visiting demolition sites to salvage the flooring. While you can find quality reclaimed wood if you’re patient enough, what if your heart is set on getting the wood from a specific source, such as an old barn house or an antique home?
It’s understandable when homeowners want special stories behind the materials in their homes and don’t want to say their floors were mass-produced. But what if you do find a source with an impressive backstory, but the problem is that the wood salvaged from the site won’t be enough to fill your floor?
The innovative solution to not having enough planks is to mix and match planks from different sources. You can choose to highlight their differences by sanding the planks down and using a natural stain or use material that has not been sanded to show the original patina and saw marks.
You can use a richer stain to bring the whole floor together. And the beauty of the varying textures and grains can be appreciated when going in to take a closer look.
Embrace its history
If you’ve chosen reclaimed wood as your hardwood flooring of choice for its personality, then you should let it shine. Don’t hide its slight blemishes and discoloration. Allow its age and strength to show. Reclaimed hardwood uses processes to reveal the wood’s history; it’s not meant to look like newly manufactured wood planks. This may include using a natural stain to highlight the weathered grayish tone that the old wood has acquired over the years. And a process that is careful not to hide the wood’s charm, including wormholes or the wood’s original mill marks.
Are you intrigued by the idea of using reclaimed wood in your home? Talk to one of our experts and see how reclaimed wood could be part of your next project.
