Welcome to Surface, a blog by Carlisle Wide Plank Floors. Join us in discussion about hardwood flooring wood grains & styles, home decor, green building products, trends and more.
Nancy, a customer in Stow, Mass., did her kitchen floor with pre-finished Red Oak and the result, as you can see from the photos, is striking.
The flooring, done in 10-inch widths, mixes beautifully with the other touches in the kitchen, especially the 1850s-era reproduction cast iron cookstove.
In combination with the floor, the kitchen, the cabinets, the appliances and the cabinetry give it all a rustic, homey look and feel.
After completing the floor and living with it a few weeks, Nancy wrote us to ask how best to clean it. Should she use vinegar and water? Yes, we answered! That’s the best way to clean our floors.
Posted on Aug 26, 2009 AT 10:33 AM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments
“I wanted each board to have a knot or character, and he made it work,” customer Regina Moline said of the wood she wanted and of the care she received from Rick at Carlisle.
The order was for 2,200 square feet of old growth Heart Pine — 9-inches wide and pre-finished with Concord Honey.
From the kitchen, the flooring project will extend into the living room, after a wood fireplace gets installed, with enough left over to do a little attic office.
“Friends have come up here and they all love it,” Regina says. And … her sister- in-law is now thinking about calling Carlisle for a floor project of her own
Posted on Aug 25, 2009 AT 02:59 AM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments
Mother Nature decided for Elizabeth MacIntire which floor would be re-done first. Elizabeth just happens to be a former Carlisle employee, who had longed for one of our floors for a long time.
An ice dam on the roof fhe1980s-style she and her husband purchased in New Boston, N.H., created a leak and ruined wall-to-wall carpeting in the dining room.
“I was thrilled that I was FINALLY going to get myself a Carlisle Wide Plank floor (thank you Mother Nature!),” she wrote to us.
They chose 10-inch Southern Yellow Heart Pine, finished with 3 coats Antique Satin Tung Oil and, for a little shine, a top coat of Original Tung Oil.
That Mother Nature-induced project led to another — removing a wall from the front hall into the dining room, and then the stairs which also got the Heart Pine to keep, as Elizabeth said, “the gorgeous wood flowing throughout the home.”
Posted on Aug 24, 2009 AT 02:55 AM in (0) Comments
We had a little “staining situation” recently, and we wanted to share it with you to show how we work with our customers from the time they find our product to the time they set their furniture on their recently finished new floor.
In the building of a rather large new home in McLean, Virginia, the floor installer and finisher contacted Carlisle’s Todd Waterman to show him how the Bradford Umber stain (see all about our stains here)he had applied had actually turned out, and he was not pleased. The installer sent Todd some photos so that he could see it for himself. Sure enough—there was an unacceptable amount of color variation and some unsightly overlap marks in the stain they had just applied. Todd and Janel went over to Virginia from our Washington D.C. showroom and Todd proceeded to apply more stain right over the stain that they had applied some two days before. The homeowner and floor installer were standing by to watch. Todd, however, used a lambs wool applicator and let the stain sit for just a few minutes before he wiped it away in a circular motion, changing the rag often as it got filled. Then he wiped the boards down all at once in the direction of the wood’s grain. Todd completed a 3-foot by 3-foot section and then applied more stain, overlapping by a few inches where he had already wiped a section off. He did this same thing down and back all over again until the whole room was done.
The group that had gathered to watch this then stood some more to watch the stain “set up.”
“It came out very even and consistent in the rich color that we all know and love,” Todd says. The installer had explained to Todd that he had applied the Carlisle stain in the same way he had always done with other stains, which are more watery and penetrating, by wiping it on with a rag and wiping it right off. Though he had been staining floors for years, he had not used this method and felt there was something wrong with the stain. Todd says the installer just needed to “embrace change” in his methods.
Todd was asked to return to the house a few days later, after the original crew completed re-staining the rest of the floors in the house. This time Todd’s job was to show them how to now apply the Tung Oil that the installer also wasn’t crazy about using. So Todd applied the Tung Oil in one of the bedrooms as the group all watched again. The result? As expected, the oil “brought the stain to life” and leveled the light and dark areas to a consistent tone throughout the floor. The whole gang, Todd says, was very pleased.
Todd says this story just demonstrates what we’ve always known: Carlisle’s stains are different and that’s a good thing. They are a topical stain, which means they are easy to work with and to re-activate, as Todd did after the original problem application. And it allows control over the depth of color. More watery stains, like Minwax, soaks into the wood and the color is the color. Carlisle’s stains allow for flexibility in adjusting the color, fix spots before the finishing, and result in a darker, richer tone that is hard to achieve in other stains.
Oh. And did we mention they’re easy to work with? Todd admits that prior to walking into this $6 million home and acting like he knew what he was doing, he had only ever stained a 400-square-foot floor. Once.
We’ll try to show you some of the “after” pictures real soon.
Posted on Aug 14, 2009 AT 05:35 AM in (0) Comments
We got a nice note from James Rashford, who recently installed Carlisle’s Brown Maple floor in his kitchen in New Windsor, New York. The floors in the photos below are all 7-inch widths and they were prefinished in the Carlisle shops with a clear coating. Mr. Rashford has a few square feet of these boards left over and is now considering doing another room. Here’s what he wrote about his project:
“I’m very happy with the product. Definitely different from anything I’ve seen in most folk’s houses. The finish is excellent…a little dangerous though (ie. slippery) in stocking feet. The grains provide a lot of visual character, even my wife is pleased.”
You can see more detail about Carlisle’s Brown Maple options here.
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