Reclaimed Wood Flooring

We knew we wanted wood flooring in the house, in all the living areas but for the entry room, and bathrooms. It’s very resistant to wear and tear (if finished correctly), easily cleaned, and altogether offers a long life. By coincidence I learned of Habitat for Humanity’s stash of reclaimed hardwood in a warehouse in downtown Syracuse.

The lineage of our flooring is a little sketchy: from which of the 18 homes in Syracuse it came out of can’t be confirmed. Two years ago, SUNY Environmental School of Forestry was looking to construct a new dormitory, and the homes were to be removed to create the necessary space.  SUNY investigated the idea of de-constructing the dorms with the intent to salvage or recycle as much as possible. Unfortunately, their construction timeline and budget hadn’t factored in deconstruction.  So Habitat was given roughly two days per house to go in and take out as much as they could before the remaining structures were demolished. The age of the houses were 1850s-1950’s, and Habitat focused their efforts on the older homes with more period details.

Initial quantity, as delivered!

We missed getting the maple pile, but Greg Wright of Habitat let us take as much of the white oak as we could. We really liked the fact that the boards were weathered and included some long stock (up to 16ft) that’s no longer common today. We requested 1800 square foot of the material, and Paul Fowler (our builder) picked it up to bring it to the site. We paid $1.50 a square foot, with a promise of more if we needed some to finish the job. Our goal was to cover both the main (living, dining, kitchen) and upper (bedrooms, hallway) floors with this wood.

Putting the puzzle together took some time

Our initial impression of the pile was “that’s a lot of wood!” But by the time the flooring guys sorted through it, taking out the pieces with the broken tongues and grooves or pieces that were too ripped to use, we ended up with barely enough to do 700+ sf of the main level. We went back for more.  The next load containing a greater mixture of wood: white and red oak, with some maple mixed in.  This wood was also a more damaged, and after a few hours, the flooring guys announced they were uncomfortable working with it.  

Thankfully, Justin (as a belated mother’s day present, he joked) went in and sorted this pile, cutting out the bad pieces of wood to create shorter more usable lengths. He also came up with the solution for using the cut pieces that would no longer have the tongues on the end: screw and fill these ends so that they wouldn’t pop and creak (this avoided gluing the floor, which I was against because of the smell).  So in the end, we cobbled together enough flooring to finish the main floor and the upstairs kids bedrooms and hallway. We needed to resort to some new red oak flooring to do the master bedroom, because Habitat was out of flooring for us to use. In contrast to their work with the reclaimed material, the flooring installers had this room done in no time. I must admit, I have no idea where Paul rushed out to get it, but would guess that it was chosen for it’s price point rather than sustainable features given our overrun on this item.

Justin with Gorilla "wood" Glue adds oak plugs
to fill screw holes. At right, note the "X" marked
by installers to indicate where screws were needed.

The final phase will entail sanding and refinishing the floors with a water-based polyurethane tinted to help bring all the various wood types together.

Lessons Learned from Using Reclaimed Flooring

You save some trees….

Many of today’s woods are shipped from around the world and can come from unsustainable forestry practices. Purchasing FSC (Forest Stewardship Council certified wood) wood was an option, but it was more than three times as expensive as the reclaimed wood (albeit that’s without factoring in the extra installation costs we will incur with the reclaimed flooring).

You preserve a little bit of history…..

Aesthetically, it gives a patina and richness to our floor that you won’t get in a new floor. Additionally, historic flooring is likely to offer greater board length and width. Our 16-foot lengths are a unique feature.

You support local business/organizations…..

Most of the reclaimed material you will find is processed by a local business or organization (Habitat in our case).

You reduce transportation costs associated with the product…

And more importantly, the carbon footprint associated with the transportation and manufacturing of the product.

You will not get perfect pieces…..

Deconstruction is an evolving practice. The quality of your wood is dependant upon the skill of the people removing the pieces. Some of the deconstruction groups are now removing flooring in sheets.  Later, without the pressure of time, they separate the boards, which helps preserve the tongues and grooves that are essential to the integrity of the floor. 

The lifespan of your floors might be shorter than that of a new board…..

Because these boards have been sanded already at least once in their history, the amount of usable floor surface can be diminished.  Of course if you start with a 1” thick piece of barn board or some other such stock, you could get more wood than current flooring provides. In our view, it’s infinitely better to have the real hardwood that’s left in the used boards than to install laminated wood floors whose surface is less than ¼ inch and have one life (no sanding and refinishing).

You will not have a perfect surface…..

History has marked used wood flooring, with scratches, holes, stains and other blemishes. While sanding and refinishing will minimize many of these imperfections, you will never have the new floor look that is achieved with an out of the box product. We choose to view the imperfections as “character” and like the fact that no two of our floors will look alike.

Increased time and Labor…..

This is the biggie. Our installers would have finished installation in less than two days with new wood flooring, and another day (or two ½ days) would have been needed for sanding and finishing this flooring. Our project went over budget after the second day, because the labor necessary to sort the good floor pieces from the unusable ones, in addition to prepping boards that required cleaning (of the tongues) or cutting (of bad pieces), and then figuring out how to best fit them together, was much higher than anticipated. In fact, if it weren’t for the intervention of Justin, we might still be in a standoff over labor expectations and the related cost of such labor.

In the future, I will be able to post on the total cost of the floor, since we are still waiting to learn what the sanding and finishing price will be. 

Finished installation, ready for sanding and refinishing with low VOC polyurethane.

New red oak flooring in master bedroom, ready for sanding and finishing.

After the Memorial Day weekend, the sanding commenced. Above left, the contrast between the "new" wood and the old. Above right, the "first pass" results in a fairly uniform floor.