Surface Blog

If you’re heading toward Carlisle headquarters this summer, “shake’” it up a

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Carlisle has been working for 35 years on projects to restore and reproduce antique wood floors. Several of these exciting projects have been in buildings that are on the list of National Historic Landmarks.  Whenever we take on such a project, we work with the client to make sure we understand the building’s history, its location, the era in which it was built, the style of the floor and the original craftspeople involved.  One such Historic Landmark project we worked on is virtually in our own backyard here at Carlisle headquarters in Stoddard, New Hampshire. Canterbury Shaker Village shown here in our e-newsletter.  Canterbury Shaker Village is just about an hour’s drive from us and, now that summer has arrived, we recommend to folks passing through New Hampshire. The restaurant  on this site is topnotch, and the history of the Shaker clan that founded this community is endlessly fascinating. Established here in 1792 and operating as a viable community for 200 years, the last member of the Shaker sect (they were celebate, so the sect has died out) died in 1992. The property has been a museum ever since. For this one, we used Heart Pine, 4 to 8” widths and we think it does justice to 200-plus years of history!

Posted on Jul 13, 2009 AT 03:07 AM in (0) Comments

On Broadway, our Carlisle crews have beautified J. Crew’s decor

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Carlisle has now had its floors installed in a number of J.Crew retail stores around the country and the photos below show the latest project, this time on Broadway in Manhattan. The floors and dressing rooms, plus the cabinetry, were all done in custom-graded milled barn wood. These boards were reclaimed by Carlisle from an old building. For just the perfect look, the old barn boards were sorted to use just the medium- to dark-toned ones, and they were also re-milled to remove any of the original saw marks from when the boards were first made into a building. For this Manhatten project, the boards were then given an Extra White Woca Oil finish.

According to Peter Switzer in our Stoddard, New Hampshire offices, Carlilse has been working with the J.Crew stores for some time. Our floors can be seen in their Hampton, New York location, plus three others in New York City, with a fourth one soon to follow. (We’ll be sure to let you know when.)  Our floors are also in J. Crew’s Malibou, California location.  Here’s a peak  at the J.Crew Women’s Store we did on Madison Avenue in New York—complete with Hickory in a herringbone pattern.

Posted on Jul 10, 2009 AT 02:46 AM in Green Building • (0) Comments

A do-it-yourself project: beautiful Ash floors before and after

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

We’re thrilled when clients are kind enough to send us photos when they complete a Carlisle flooring project by themselves.  Back in April, Carlisle’s Lauren Fanti got photos from her client, JoAnn Johnson, after the Carlisle Premium Grade Ash floors had just been installed. JoAnn had applied the Bradford Umber stain and the Tung Oil finish herself.  Now JoAnn and her family are fully using their rooms and their new floors. So, here they are again, this time completely lived in. Client JoAnn writes: “Love the floors, as does everyone who sees them.”

 

Posted on Jul 09, 2009 AT 01:06 PM in (0) Comments

Antique vs Old Growth wood choices from Carlisle

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

If you have a historic home and you’ve taken a little time to wander around Carlisle’s website here to see all the flooring choices, you might be wondering if you should use Antique Wood
in order to make the floors more historically authentic. In our many years of working on historic restorations, we’ve found that Old Growth Eastern White Pine and Southern Long Leaf Heart Pine were the woods most commonly used for flooring in the “old days”—not so much for the look they create, but because of their massive dimensions and ease of cutting. Growing up to 80 feet high and 2- to 3-feet in diameter, these old growth trees created wide and long boards that could be installed quickly and easily. Today the trees used to make our Old Growth wood floors are between 150 and 200 years old. While many clients believe they need to use an antique wood to restore the floor to its original condition, we often suggest that a client consider one of our Old Growth woods because that’s what would have been used originally.

Posted on Jul 06, 2009 AT 04:21 AM in (0) Comments

Seems that Carlisle floors look pretty good in carriage houses

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Newport, Rhode Island is full of wonderful old mansions, and we think this Carriage House on the ocean there can now definitely hold a candle to them.  Carlisle’s Mark Nichols sent along these photos of a carriage house in that seaport town where the owners installed 5,700 square feet of Carlisle’s 10-inch wide Country Heart Pine.  Turns out the owners liked the effect so much that they now plan on gutting a house that they own in the Hamptons and installing another 6,000 square feet of Carlisle floors!

Here’s another carriage house we think turned out absolutely gorgeous.  Carlisle’s Lauren Power worked with the builder on this project and he just loves Carlisle floors.  This one is a 13- to 20-inch wide Eastern White Pine with a Bradford Umber stain.  This customer had previously installed Carlisle’s pre-finished Heart Pine with a hand-scraped face and edge on the first floor of this carriage house.

Posted on Jul 03, 2009 AT 07:19 AM in (0) Comments