Surface Blog

Incorporate Textures Into Your Home Decor

• Posted by
• Sharon Bondie

Popular home decor and home improvement blog Apartment Therapy has offered a fun entry about getting more tactile in the home. The Article cites several textures that are becoming popular. The use of wicker in home decor is on its way back in for sure.  Mixing it with other textures is the thing to do.  Consider combining it with hardwood floors. The great thing about hardwood floors is that they can support any decor. As trends come and go, hardwoods are here forever.  Wide planks boards are very popular and unusual.  They create a very free flow look in your floor not a choppy look that can fight with your decor.

Posted on Jan 22, 2008 AT 12:31 PM in (0) Comments

Denver Victorian Renovation: A Carlisle Customer

• Posted by
• Lindsay Barczuk

Check out this link to my sister’s Denver Victorian Renovation blog.  She has been converting a multi-apartment Victorian house in the Baker neighborhood into a single family home.  She and her husband had originally hoped to salvage the existing floor, but they concluded the original floors were past the point of repair. 

They came to Carlisle wanting to match the grain and color of the wood.  They are restoring most of the original woodwork throughout the home and wanted a floor to complement the rich mahogany finishes.  We custom crafted a handful of samples and ultimately found that this Old Growth Heart Pine with Autumn Leaf stain and Tung Oil finish was the perfect combination. 

Check out the link and some of the other cool antiques they discovered along the process.  Any of you have experience working on a similar type project?

Posted on Jan 22, 2008 AT 05:43 AM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments

Green Building: Let’s Define it First…

• Posted by
• Lindsay Barczuk

When I was in San Fran at a the PCBC Green Conference in 2006, one of the speakers told us that "Green Building is like pornography.  It’s difficult to define, but you know it when you see it"... I like that idea - it’s not a black and white topic.  If you ask 10 people what they think it means, you may see some similarities, but you will get 10 different answers.

Carlisle Wide Plank Floor’s definition: Green building applies to the process of incorporating sound environmental consideration into design, planning, and construction.

How would you define Green Building?  I think we’ve all seen some oxymoronic green buildings - like the 6500 sf Green Home (maybe not the best short term use of raw materials and long term use of energy).  What Green Building agendas do you think are non-negotiable?

Posted on Jan 22, 2008 AT 02:47 AM in Green Building • (3) Comments

A Message from Don Carlisle

• Posted by
• Don Carlisle

It’s my pleasure to welcome you to a new endeavor at Carlisle Wide Plank Floors - our very own blog. We wanted to find a way to acknowledge the special customer relationships that we’ve developed during the past 40 years and find even more ways to reach out into the community and make ourselves available to you.
Like our Surface newsletter, our new Surface blog reflects the idea that there is no more important surface than the one we live on. You could take this literally to mean the floor of your home—or you could take it a bit deeper to mean the surface we all live on: our planet. Both are of utmost importance to all of us at Carlisle.

With an increase in environmental awareness and a widespread effort to "go green," many companies are finding ways to educate others about the importance of sustainability. At Carlisle, we’ve been "green" from the very beginning. And we see this blog as an opportunity to explore the many different ways in which our company is committed to the environment - from dispelling myths surrounding forestry practices to helping you understand the ecological benefits that a Carlisle Wide Plank Floor can offer.

I’ll be posting periodically to give you updates on new happenings at Carlisle as well as my thoughts from the perspective of a second generation owner in our family-run business. I’ll also be discussing a variety of forestry-related topics, including the approaches we use at Carlisle. 

I hope that you will not only find the content in this blog valuable, but that you will carry with you the spirit and commitment that we uphold at Carlisle Wide Plank Floors:  a company that maintains the highest of ideals and treats its customers the way we ourselves would like to be treated.  

Equally important, we hope that you will share with us some of your stories, whether you’re a past Carlisle customer or may become one in the future. With five contributing employee bloggers and the potential for more to join in, we like to think of ourselves as one big family and we hope you will feel the same. We encourage you to comment but just keep in mind that we do have some basic User Guidelines.

Our bloggers are:

Jennifer Fox - a Carlisle employee and customer whose focus will be on the health effects of wide plank flooring, forestry practices and her first-hand knowledge of the customer experience.

Lindsay Barczuk - the "green queen" of our company, she will bring her environmental expertise and passion for eco-culture to our blog. 

Rick Menard - an experienced account manager and active outdoorsman, he will be sharing his expertise on topics appealing to builders, architects and homeowners alike.

Sharon Bondie - located in our Georgia office, Sharon will be discussing topics such as installing over slab and home decorating on a budget.

Stephanie Urquhart - one of our great customer service representatives, Stephanie will be here to discuss customer service, the Carlisle process and address your questions or comments.

While each blogger has a unique voice and message, we’ll all be posting on a wide range of subjects including Carlisle as a company, the knowledge we have of our products, and our own personal interests.

We’re excited. Thanks so much for visiting and we look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Don Carlisle, President
Carlisle Wide Plank Floors

Posted on Jan 17, 2008 AT 03:42 AM in (2) Comments

Green Beginnings: Clarum Homes and Carlisle Wide Plank Floors

• Posted by
• Lindsay Barczuk

I recently read an article in the USA Today about Clarum Homes founder John Suppes.  The article focused on how he started the company years ago based on green principles - even "before it was cool". 

The story sounded so familiar and that’s because Carlisle was founded over 40 years ago on the foundation of being a responsible steward of the environment.  I hope to spend a lot of time talking about the foundation of our company, our current forestry and manufacturing practices, as well as our goals for the future.

The other point I’d like to address from the Clarum article is his position that "the most reliable material is timber harvested in an ecologically sound manner".  Carlisle floors are made of these materials - timbers that are harvested selectively with long-term sustainability in mind.

Posted on Jan 14, 2008 AT 01:29 PM in Green Building • (2) Comments