Choosing Your Flooring Experience: Reclaimed, Traditional, or Character Grade?
There is no part of a room that is used, felt, and seen more than its floor. At Olde Wood Ltd we charged ourselves with the responsibility of creating a hardwood flooring experience that rises to this occasion and then raises the bar. We are proud to offer three distinct lines of premium wide plank flooring, each up to the challenge of being a room’s aesthetic flagship.
Let’s explore the story, the look, and value components of our three flooring product categories.
Reclaimed Hardwood Flooring
“ They don’t make them like they used to.” The barns, stables, and first factories of the American frontier were built using the strongest virgin timbers the land had to offer; wood that now often surpasses 400 years in age. After weathering the seasons and strain of often upwards of a century of service, the rich wood of these buildings remains true in its strength and beautifully enriched by the slow hands of time.
Utilizing these historic materials, our Reclaimed line presents a wide plank flooring experience that celebrates the history behind each board. Naturally weathered colors and deep, inviting textures announce to eyes and feet alike that your home holds a carefully curated selection of the timeless wood that made America.
Each of the sixteen available Reclaimed options offers a look as unique as its story. For example, our Antique Wormy Chestnut, now a virtually extinct species, is among the rarest of all North American hardwoods, and bares an exotic look that rivals its scarcity. In addition to its trademark insect-bored holes, it also preserves the marks that characterize every Reclaimed option—nail holes, saw marks, and checking that were proudly earned during the wood’s early years of service.
In addition to weaving a century’s worth of narrative into your home, an Olde Wood Reclaimed floor also adds property value that will only increase as these historic materials steadily become even more limited over time.
Traditionally-Milled Hardwood Flooring
Our Traditonal flooring line is sourced from mature, slow-growth trees that are up to 250 years in age. These trees knew the dense American forests that once existed before industrial expansion and development made them a thing of the past. In these thick forests, trees had to compete for sunlight, water, and nutrients. This competition caused the trees to grow far slower than those planted and harvested for modern day lumber. Having only enough resources to grow slightly each year, the rings of the trees grew extremely close together, giving the wood an unmistakably tight grain pattern.
The Traditional flooring experience is defined by purity. Live-sawn and free from the attention-grabbing character marks that define the Reclaimed line, each tightly grained wide plank board trumpets the distinct magnificence of its species as only mature, slow-growth timber can.
If it is Cherry hardwood that you seek, there is no other flooring option that can call to attention the rich reds and browns of its heartwood and the creamy contrast of its sapwood quite like Traditional Cherry. Like all of our Traditionally-Milled offerings, this extremely slow-growth timber presents the purest form of the species that can be found.
Our old world milling practices further celebrate the purity of each species. By plain sawing with an original sixty-inch blade we are able to present all of the interior grades of single each specie, rather than having to cut and separate by grade as is the case with most modern hardwood. The result of this authentic plain sawing process is a presentation of species that could only be matched by an old water-driven mill.
A Traditionally-Milled floor is also an investment in a very limited resource. As responsibly sourced, slow-growth timber becomes more and more of a rarity, this product will steadily increase in value.
Character Grade Flooring
Our Character Grade flooring line is a celebration of the many variations within each species. Visually, each wide plank tells the story of what happens when the grain patterns of certain species swirl, or when knots are irregular, or when exposure to a staining mineral occurs. Our Character Grade flooring line allows the homeowner to display the many incarnations of a hardwood species in a single floor.
Unlike the strip-flooring sold at large retail chains, our Character Grade line offers board lengths and widths usually found only in a custom-milled floor. Because we do our own milling, we are able to offer a genuine, wide plank flooring experience at a price similar to that of a boxed strip-floor, making the look and feel of a custom hardwood floor achievable within any budget.
In addition to the inherent value of wide plank hardwood, Character Grade flooring allows for the longest possible board lengths. This results in fewer seems and greater cost effectiveness.
Your Flooring Experience
Whether you are creating the vision for a new home or hoping to compliment the personality of an existing home, we are excited to help you find your perfect flooring experience (We really are—this is what we do!).
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