Carlisle Wide Plank Floors

Surface Blog

• Carlisle’s foot-worn distressed Walnut wide planks goes sky high in Chicago’s Hancock Tower

  Posted by Christine Halvorson

  

  Our Sales and Design consultant Gary Ryer sent along this photo as a kind of “sneak peak” into an upcoming magazine spread that will include this above-the-clouds flooring project. We’re talking the 92nd floor of Chicago’s Hancock Tower.

  It may be our wide plank Walnut that already has a lot of old-world character to it, but this apartment still manages to pull off a pretty swank metro feel to it, don’t you think? (That’s not surprising to us, but we get a lot of questions about putting wood floors in modern buildings.)

  The floor shown here is an 8-inch, select grade Walnut, that has been “distressed” with a foot-worn feel. The boards were then finished with a clear matte finish that was applied after installation.
  We’re pretty excited about the project and, apparently, so was the owner—he’s already ordered another 3,000 square feet for a couple more units he bought next door to this one!

  Here’s another example of a footworn Walnut, using a fancy tile inlay technique and more about the footworn distressed style.

  And another way you can see how the traditional and the modern can blend pretty well in a variety of settings.

  Posted on December 30, 2009 at 12:01 AM in Hardwood Flooring • Home Decor • (0) Comments

• Hardwood Floors magazine features Carlisle’s Walnut in a spectacular rural Wisconsin retreat

  Posted by Christine Halvorson

  

  The December/January issue of Hardwood Floors (the magazine of the National Wood Flooring Association) features a whole lot of photos and a nice story about one of our customers and his labor of love building a retreat for his parents.

  The new home was designed by Tom Jones, owner of Thomas R. Jones Design in Trabuco Canyon, California, for his parents, Ray and Janette, as their vacation home in the north woods of Wisconsin. Tom set out to design a retreat that capitalized on a long family history in that area of the country and on Tom’s own childhood memories and the family’s commitment to ecology and the study of the natural world.

  The new retreat is in the deep woods of Wisconsin, just south of Lake Superior, where Tom spent special times while visiting the area from his childhood home in southern California. The Jones family had deep ties to the territory, just south of Lake Superior, and Tom set out to capture them all in one way or another in his design.

  The home’s interior is all about stone and wood—and the wood on the floors is Carlisle’s own wide plank Walnut. The overall shape of the home calls to mind the big barns of Wisconsin’s farmland, with the wide plank floors of the interior enhancing that effect.

  Here’s what designer and loyal son Tom had to say about the Walnut floor: “It has a rustic feel, but not too much. We really like the dark color of the walnut as well. It sort of grounded the space.”

  Tom and his father had Terry Nelson, owner of Terry’s Installation Service in Hayward, Wisconsin, install the Carlisle floor. Nelson commented that he doesn’t see a lot of homes with walnut used for the main boards of the floor. Usually it’s ash, oak, maple or hickory, while walnut is often used as an accent in strips and borders.

  “It’s not every day that you walk in around here and see—especially in wideplank—a walnut floor,” he says.

  Nelson used a blind-nailing technique to attach the floor boards to a subfloor above radiant heating. He also used a urethane-based construction adhesive during installation. “The adhesive helps hold the wood flat—keeps it from cupping,” he said in this article. “If it does move, it helps it come back to where it’s supposed to be.”

  You can read a lot more about this beautiful retreat and its construction by clicking through to the article itself here, in PDF format. It features some fabulous photography from Hardwood Floors.

  Hardwood_Floors_Magazine_Article.pdf

  See many more beautiful photos of this home at this company website of son Tom Jones.

  As you can see, Carlisle floors presented no problem above radiant heat systems. Read more about the benefits of radiant heat.

  Many more examples of using Walnut in various rooms can be seen here.

  Posted on December 29, 2009 at 12:55 PM in Hardwood Flooring • Home Building & Contracting • (0) Comments

• Monday Morning Mailbag: Orlando couple writes with news of durability in Carlisle’s White Oak

  Posted by Christine Halvorson

  Scanned_Card_Switzer_Debbie_Coble.pdf
  Justin and Debbie Coble of Orlando, Florida, had a Carlisle White Oak floor installed in their home over a year ago. They recently dropped us a note (attached here) to say how impressed they were with the way the floor has held up to their two toddlers and their frequent guests. The Cobles worked with Peter Switzer of Carlisle and had actually used Carlisle floors before.

  Posted on December 28, 2009 at 02:02 PM in Customer Stories • Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments

• Will your remodeling investment pay off?

  Posted by Christine Halvorson

  According to Remodeling Magazine’s 2009-10 Cost vs. Value Report, a major kitchen remodel costs $57,215 with 72 percent of those costs recouped in a sale of the home. Of course, the recoup numbers are down significantly from just a few years ago because of the current economic crisis and the ongoing credit crunch. So, it’s probably a scary time to think about remodeling your home. Real estate conditions vary widely throughout the country and even within very narrow local markets. But, one of the things we like to point out to people about installing a Carlisle floor as part of a remodeling project is that the floor “pays back” in several ways.

  

  A Carlisle Wide Plank Floor can improve the home’s beauty and increase its value at the same time. Because a Carlisle floor is made from the heart of a 100-year-old (or older) tree, it will last for generations, which generally can’t be said about any other flooring product. Carlisle wood is selectively harvested from well-managed forests or, as in the case of our 100 percent post-consumer reclaimed antique wood, is recycled from an old barn or mill. The initial investment in a Carlisle floor more than pays for itself over the years given its durability and dollars saved on maintenance. Unique methods of fine milling and periodic finishing with Tung Oil make these floors virtually maintenance free.

  Remodeling is pretty much how Carlisle got started in this business in the first place. In our neck of the woods in New Hamphisre, people wanted to add rooms onto historic homes—some dating back to Colonial times—and wanted the flooring to match. We fulfilled that need, and then some.

  If a remodeling project is in your future, yes, today’s economic conditions are scary, but you just might add a little bit of “insurance” to your future resale with the addition of a Carlisle floor.

  Posted on December 24, 2009 at 12:56 PM in DIY • Home Building & Contracting • (1) Comments

• Monday Morning Mailbag: L.A. home gets a rustic touch with Eastern White Pine

  Posted by Christine Halvorson

  .

  Our Design and Sales Consultant Dan O’Neil, in our West Hollywood:http://www.wideplankflooring.com/we-make-buying-easy/ showroom sent along this note he got from one of his customers in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. Lowell and Heydie Frazee had chosen Carlisle’s Eastern White Pine with a Bradford Umber stain for their kitchen floor remodeling project. The Frazees installed the floor themselves and then sent us the photos. The planks were all 11 inches wide and finished with a low VOC Tung oil.

  They wrote: “Everyone that sees it comments on it and thinks it is beautiful. Thanks for all your help. We struggled for some time with what manufactured wood or vinyl floor material we would use with everything coming up unsatisfactory. This floor seems now to be the perfect choice. It’s like having a piece of beautiful furniture on the floor. We could not be more pleased. Now our daughter wants us to extend it throughout the whole house. Hmmmm…. Maybe in a few years.”

  

  Thinking about Carlisle floors? We don’t blame you. Get started with your exploration here where we explain how one goes about the fun yet daunting task for choosing just the right floor for your home.

  Posted on December 21, 2009 at 12:41 PM in Customer Stories • Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments

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