The old standby in renovation floor protection is rosin paper. There are so many drawbacks though. It gets dirty, it tears, it’s time consuming to put down and worst of all, it really doesn’t protect the floors all that well.

Back when I actually had a crafts room in my house, I bought some interlocking rubber tiles at Lowes to protect my hardwood floors. I’ve since gotten rid of the work room (It’s now just a junk room that dreams of one day becoming a dining room.) so I took up those tiles and brought them to the house that’s under renovation.

Sure, the initial investment costs way more than some paper but if the renovation is going on long enough that you have to keep changing the paper or if you’re doing multiple renovations, I say it’s worth it.

The tiles can be washed or mopped so you don’t have to live with the dust. They are water proof apart from the seams. They’ll last forever and they’re totally reusable. No need to install them around the whole house. Just pick them up and take them from room to room as needed.

I purchased Flexco (shown above) because I wanted it to look good in my house but there are less expensive tiles out there if design doesn’t matter.

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They all doubted me. The pine sub floor covered in paint, paper and tar could never be a finished floor, said they. Well, I had faith in Desmond the Floor Guy. Called him to look at it. “Sure, no problem.” said he. The day his guys came over and saw the work ahead of them, they screamed that I needed a new floor. Well, the distressed look may not be everyone’s taste and areas had to be patched but behold the beauty of my new/old floors!

Desmond Harmon has been installing and refinishing wood floors for over a quarter of a century. He’s been doing my floors for 18 of those years now. So long, that I still have a pager number for him. His cell is 917-642-2752.

Where unfinished floor meets finished

Before

After

Again? Before.

And after.

Desmond

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I’m loving the look of Torzo Sustainable Surfaces, but even cooler than that is what their product lines are made from. Post agricultural recycled sorghum, sunflower hulls and hemp? Yeah, they use post industrial recycled fiberboard and chip board too, but it’s way cooler to say “Look at my hemp floor.” now, isn’t it? I mean, let’s get our priorities straight.

Torzo products aren’t 100% green. It’s tough to be fully green when you want a countertop or floor to last. Depending on the product line, 25%-50% of it is acrylic resin. The good news is that the resin used is manufactured by Torzo’s parent company, an Oregon based, family run, woman owned business.

Looks like Stone Source is the only place that carries Torzo locally.

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We usually try to stick to local reclaimed wood resources but new advertiser Reclaimed Lumber (see link on the sidebar) has a warehouse in Pennsylvania. That’s local enough. Plus, they do ship nationwide.

The wide plank pine shown in the above photo is $5.95 per square foot. That’s not bad! The website says that shipping should cost less than $250.

One can get lost on the site. There’s all sorts of reclaimed flooring, including pine and oak from barns and wine barrels. But flooring is just the start. There’s paneling that’s not your grandma’s 1970’s wall paneling. Ceiling panels, reclaimed wood furniture, beams, frames and slabs. It’s the go-to source for reclaimed wood in any form.

You can buy and sell barns on the site. No sh*t! And old log cabins!

Kind of makes me wish I was restoring an old country home.

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Summit Surfaces has introduced a new parquet flooring line. The recycled 200 year old maple comes from a factory in Tribeca. It looks a little different than that thin crap you can buy at big box stores, no?

Although they do use the word “affordable” on their website, I’m not quite sure it’s affordable to everyone as their clients look pretty high end. At any rate, perhaps I can afford one tile to use as a trivet? They ARE beautiful!

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Love this! Artist Chrissy Conant created this human rug masterpiece in 2005 out of silicon rubber. The hair is real!

Effin awesome bear! $1800 from C.S. Post

These faux furs minus the heads are only $179 from Faux Fur Comforter.

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While searching for porch flooring I came across a reclaimed lumber company that gets it’s wood from places such as exotic Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

Well, it IS exotic woods like Ipe and Kumaru. New York City is the largest consumer of tropical woods for boardwalks, benches and other outdoor uses. The city has curbed the use of these woods due to protests from environmental groups, but not completely. The reclaimed Ipe is a way to use these woods sustainably.

So, enter Sawkill Lumber. Partners Alan Solomon and Klaas Armster of Solomon Wood and Armster Lumber have inventory from the Coney Island and Rockaway boardwalks as well as from those water tanks you that enhance the NYC skyline.

I haven’t received a price quote yet, but I’m not too bothered for my current project. I suspect this stuff isn’t cheap. I mean, who doesn’t want to say their floor is made from the Coney Island boardwalk?!

So, I wait until I build a deck on the Brooklyn house. If I can’t afford a whole deck, there will be SOMETHING!, a piece of the Coney Island boardwalk in my house.

No matter what the cost.

There’s a sucker born every minute. And I was minute 947823230492734 of 1965.

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My antique oak floors aren’t in terrible shape (not my house above!) and they are not in high traffic areas, so they don’t need that hard shell of plastic covering them. I’m thinking of going with a poly alternative. Probably just a maintenance waxing will do the trick. But in researching waxes, I did come up with a few green heavier duty options.

These are better for the environment than polyurethane. Some of them do contain solvents and other nasty stuff, but they are more natural than poly.

Natural oils seep into the wood instead of sitting on top so the grain isn’t hidden. Have you ever seen an antique floor that has been refinished so it looks like laminate? Yuck!

Here are three poly alternatives to start:

1. Waterlox. This is a tung oil and resin mix. Pure tung oil wouldn’t hold up too well on a floor. On the plus side, there’s no need to sand the floor between coats and it’s possible to “patch” a worn area to blend in with the rest of the floor. This can also be tinted. Down side, for me anyway, is that even the satin finish is pretty glossy. Personally, I HATE gloss!

2. Bioshield Hard Oil. This is a low VOC product made up of linseed, tung and castor stand oils mixed with resin and some other funky stuff. It’s said to enhance the grain of the wood while being durable and water resistant.

3. Eco House Hardwood Floor Oil. Linseed, Chinese wood oil, citrus thinner and resin are the ingredients in this Canadian product. It has a honey tone and it is tintable.

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My mission this week is to choose the flooring we’ll be installing on our porch. Not that we’re finished with our structural work yet, but it’s always good to be ready, ya know? The top priorities are environmental impact and price. Oh yeah, and looks. And durability.

There are fewer options when looking at outdoor flooring. For example, oak wouldn’t be the way to go. Although it’s a perfect interior hardwood, it’s not water, insect or mildew resistant.

Right now it’s looking like we’ll end up with a local wood such as cedar or douglas fir, but I just started internet research mode and haven’t visited a flooring supplier yet.

Here’s the rundown:

Local woods include pressure treated pine, cedar, redwood and douglas fir. Pressure treated is full of chemicals, although not as harsh as they once were. Redwood is becoming scarce, so that can’t be very eco-friendly. That narrows it down to cedar or douglas fir, both soft woods.

The exotic wood species are more durable and more beautiful. Although FSC wood can be purchased easily enough these days, it still doesn’t sit right with me. Not to mention the price and difficulty of working with such hard woods. These would include the ever so popular ipe, mahogany, teak and tigerwood.

Of course, if we go the recycled route, we can justify any wood. This would be our number one choice if we can afford it. You’ll be the first to know what we decide.

I should mention that composite decking is yet another option that has come a long way. IMO, it’s not wood. It’s fake and it looks it. If we were talking a back yard deck, I might have a look into it, but this is the front porch of my soon-to-be gorgeous house. I just can’t….

The post Porch Flooring Options appeared first on reclaimedhome.com.

If only the internet had smellorama

We have six cats, three of whom have chronic urinary infections. They are on special diets for the rest of their lives and they’re happy enough. The problem is, they just. won’t. use. the. litterbox. Hence, we have the Cat Pee House.

As we’ve done with renovations past, (we’ve always had a multiple cat household) we will embark on getting rid of the pee smell this week. That means nothing less than ripping up the floor.

Don’t be sad for us. If the floor was in salvageable condition, we wouldn’t have let it get this far. She was a great old floor, she was. Old long strips, probably installed around the 40’s or earlier. But there wasn’t any life left in her. She was sanded so many times that the tongue and grooves were starting to show. She didn’t have another sanding left in her.

And so we took up the floor. Then discovered the subfloor was destroyed. Ok, now you can start feeling bad for us. That looked to be in decent shape in some areas, but we’re not sure all the damage was caused by our cats. We left the original lower subfloor in, even though it got hit with the pee too.

So, here’s the plan….

This is a temporary solution until we rebuild the garage, adding a causeway to the house. That will be the new cat friendly area. At the rate things are going, all of our cats will be dead by then and we just may be also.

Anyway, plywood. That’s it. We put down tar paper underneath to protect the already peed on subfloor. This week I’ll be caulking, painting and sealing it. And of course, why not repair plaster and paint the entire room while I’m at it?

As with past deadlines, there’s a reason we’re rushing to do this now. Ah, the old house guests! The only time we ever finish projects. So this week, this blog will look like a real “renovation blog” as I chart my progress. Because I won’t have time to come up with any other kind of post.

* Follow this on Twitter.

This isn’t all cat pee. We soaked it in Nature’s Miracle before deciding to tear it out anyway.

Revealing the sub sub floor

The dogs were mostly responsible for the damaged door.

It took us an entire weekend (hubby alone on Saturday) to rip up 2 layers of flooring and install plywood. 

Everything is in the dining room now. Including the dust.

The post When Cats Go Bad appeared first on reclaimedhome.com.

Dayam! Those are some mighty fine looking tiles!

Way back in July of ’08, I did a post on encaustic tile. Fast forward to two days ago when I received a comment from Concrete Cottage on the latest installation photos uploaded to their site.

It’s a great step by step guide for those of you wanting to try this at home. Caution: Grab a tissue to wipe the drool from your keyboard.

The post Must. Have. Cement. Floor. Now. appeared first on reclaimedhome.com.

Wine Cellar Designs

You’ve probably seen recycled wine barrel bars and wine barrel chairs. I love this stuff, but it doesn’t fit every home. Perhaps it’s a tad goofy. But the floor! Ah, the reclaimed wine barrel floor! How could you not love that? It may look like any other reclaimed oak floor, but the numbers are what makes it. Is the $39 per square foot worth it though? Maybe not. You could always fake it. Stamp or burn some numbers into the wood before sealing and there you go.

Via Luxury Housing Trends

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Ooh, I love this! Birger Juell’s Cobbleblock Flooring is fabricated from antique beams and sliced cross-grain. The pieces are then sanded & oiled thricely. The flooring is available in oak or pine and needs to be grouted.

I want.
I want.
I want.

At $40 per square foot, it ain’t gonna happen. Cobblewood is just as lovely and half the price. Still out of my budget though.

Birger Juell founded the flooring company in 1946. A Norwegian immigrant, he learned the art of hand scraping wood as a young apprentice to a master craftsman. The showroom located in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart.

Via Materialicious

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Yesterday we covered beautiful but costly antique tiles. There is a way to get the look without breaking the bank and I speak, of course, of the dreaded….reproduction.

I’m only talking encaustic tiles today since you can find ceramic reproductions just about anywhere. Encaustics originated in 18th century Europe and consisted of marble dust, cement and natural granite colors. Today’s less expensive tiles are made by layering cement and then adding pigment. They may not hold up as well as the originals, but we’re talking a huge price difference! There are still companies that fabricate handmade encaustics to match historic tiles, but let’s concentrate on affordability.

Tierra Y Fuego sells 8×8 tiles for under $10 apiece. I’ve dealt with this company before and keep coming back for more. They call these tiles “decorative cement”. When it comes time to do my brownstone front hall, I gotta get me some of these!

Villa Lagoon has 10×10’s for $9 and ships from Miami. Their “mosaic cement” tiles appear to be more pastel based than the Tierra examples. The website is extremely informative. They tested various sealers and posted all the results here.

And if it’s information you want, Concrete Cottage has everything you’ve ever wanted to know about encaustic tiles. They go over the process and list just about every place in the world where you can purchase these tiles. They also have several links to floor tile simulators.

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Antique tiles are NOT inexpensive! But they are oh-so-gorgeous. Best bet to save money is try to find the tiles at a salvage place such as Island Girls (ok, pricey also). Those high brow tile boutiques will set you back a few bills, but keep in mind, you can always accent boring Home Depot tiles with a few pieces of the good stuff.

Here are some local and online sources for your antique tile needs. If they don’t fit your budget, at least get some ideas.

Bungalow Bill

Solar Antique Tiles

Luxetile

Karen Michelle Antique Tiles

L’Antiquario

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