Surface Blog

Classic parquet floor designs make a big comeback

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Floors with elegantly shaped parquet patterns arrived on the home décor scene in 16th century Europe. Craftsmen would use light and dark wood to create one-of-a-kind designs that involved an intense amount of labor. After all, each piece had to be hand-cut and fit into place. Only the wealthiest could afford theseone-of-a-kind floor designs. However, some of the patterns created that century live on in what are now known as “classic” parquet designs—Versailles, herringbone and chevron..

In the century just passed, parquet enjoyed a period of popularity in the 1970s and 1980s because the ability to mass-produce floor boards made them affordable and because they were seen as an alternative to wall-to-wall carpeting. However, discerning homeowners soon shunned the mass-produced variety as predictable and of low quality.

Today, the dramatic and customized look of parquet is once again being used in some of the finest homes in the country. Our Carlisle Custom Shop offers that same hand-cut, labor-intensive attention to the classic patterns— Versailles, herringbone and chevron—and in the variety of different woods that are at our disposal.

We can work with your design ideas to come up with your own one-of-kind pattern. Once the boards are milled, the patterns are carefully pre-finished by hand. We can do this to create a border for a floor, or a center focal point, or a whole, customized look.

Posted on Jan 14, 2010 AT 08:48 AM in (2) Comments

A “Q” we get often: Can I put wide plank floors in a small room?

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Here’s a question we often get when potential customers first call us: “I have a small room that needs new floors. Do I need to use narrow planks?”

Our answer—and the answer of many interior design experts—is an unequivocal, “No!”

Wide plank floors create a seamless, uncluttered look reminiscent of the clean, simple lines of Early American design. That’s one reason they work so well in small rooms, despite what you might think. Smaller widths in a very small room actually have the effect of making the room look too busy or cluttered. You might like that look, but to go for uncluttered and clean, wider may be better, even in the smallest of rooms.

Here’s the basic idea. Your floor serves as the backdrop to showcase other essential design elements in a room—a fabulous view, a fireplace and a gorgeous painting, for example. A floor shouldn’t distract from whatever other beautiful objects you have there.

Let’s look at one example: A 10-foot by 10-foot room that might be a good space for an office or den would require 27 pieces of narrow floor boards in 4.5 inch widths, and each board will come in 2-feet to 8-feet lengths. Those boards will create a lot of seams and butt joints which, when all combined in a small space, create a very busy look. A wide plank floor to fit a 10 × 10 room, however, would require only 7 planks of wood and would probably be done with boards that are 13 to 20 inches wide, and having an average length of 16 feet. That amounts to four times fewer planks! The result is a much more seamless look that can showcase everything else in the room besides the floor.

Posted on Jan 12, 2010 AT 12:26 AM in (2) Comments

Near Las Vegas? Look for our custom floors in Booth #N2439 of the International Builders’ Show

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Starting on January 19 and running through the 22nd, our floors will be on display at the International Builders’ Show taking place at the Las Vegas Convention Center. We already told you a little something about that event in our blog post back in November. N ow we have the details:

If you happen to stop by, you’ll get to see 200 square feet of our Eastern White Pine, showing a blend of the various grades available and laid down in 14 to 18 widths. Further back in the booth, you’ll see 200 square feet of our Antique Heart Pine in a blend of premium and select grades, in 6- to 8-inch widths. There’s nothing like seeing these floors with your own eyes, so it might be worth a trip.

The show runs 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday; 9:30 to 2 p.m. Thursday.

Posted on Jan 08, 2010 AT 09:00 AM in News & Events • (0) Comments

“Select” grade Hickory yields stunning floor in Ontario

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

A client of ours up in Ontario, Canada—Al Brouwer, president of Brouwer Construction—had these select grade Hickory floors installed in a new home he built up there. “Select grade” means that the boards were gone through again and again to get the most heart wood, which is the very center of the tree, included in each board. The heart wood ensures that each board contains the most dense and most beautiful vertical grain, and it will have maximum stability—it won’t cup or twist.

Then Mr. Brouwer took that select customization a bit further and he had us apply one or our handmade finishes to it. In this case he chose handscraped edges.

The floor boards are 6- to 10-inch wide and were finished on-site with Tung Oil. Mr. Brouwer wrote to report that the floors turned out to be the amber color he was seeking. He said at first he didn’t like the lustre—the level of shine—the floor ended up with, but once putting the furniture in place, the lustre toned down to a level he liked.

The process of choosing the wood for your floor, and then all the customizations that are possible with that particular wood, can seem overwhelmingly to folks when they first start thinking of installing wide plank floors in their home. We’ve tried to help each of our customers through the step-by-step process involved with a bit of an introduction here in We Make Buying Easy.

Posted on Jan 06, 2010 AT 04:43 AM in Home Building & Contracting • (2) Comments

Reclaimed wood plays a role in first LEED Gold home in Rhode Island

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Carlisle was proud to be part of a high-tech yet very “green” new home-build in the beach community of Narragansett, Rhode Island. The home, which is a project of Green Life Smart Life, intends to demonstrate that families can go green and build a sustainable and realistic home without compromising the environment’s needs. See more about Green Life Smart Life here, and about the Carlisle partnership.

The home, owned by the Hageman family, had its Grand Opening in mid-December 2009. Check out this entry and slideshow about it at the Apartment Therapy blog

Some 3,500 square feet of Carlisle’s reclaimed prefinished milled barnwood with a Bradford umber stain are used throughout the home. Working closely with the owners, we found just the right old barn, which had been slated for demolition, and carefully dismantled it and a created gorgeous wide plank milled barnwood from the re-milled timbers.

The home is now LEED Gold Certified, which means it has received recognition from The Green Building Council, which looks at seven factors in homes: Innovation in Design, Location and Linkage, Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality.

This is the sixth house the couple has built and/or remodeled; and though each of the past homes have captured some of the elements of this home, this is the first project to converge all of the features of green and smart.

Here’s the full scoop on our reclaimed floors.

Posted on Jan 05, 2010 AT 06:34 AM in Green Building • (2) Comments