Surface Blog

Update: The little green house that could

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Back last year about this time, we told you all about how Carlisle Wide Plank Floors was part of an exciting “green house” project in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire area.  The house was designed to be a “net zero” home, consuming less energy than it produces for the family of two that lives there. Turns out our New Hampshire television station, WMUR, and its program “New Hampshire Chronicle” has now done a feature on it, so you can see how this innovative house looks inside and out. Check out this video and, here and there, you’ll catch a glimpse of the floors underpinning all the quality, green features of this home.

The floor is made of boards reclaimed from a horse barn in New Yorka and are FSC Certified 100 percent Reclaimed Antique Long Leaf Heart Pine in Premium Grade, using 3- to 9-inch random widths. They were finished with our Amber Custom Coat prefinish because of its no-voc content. The homeowners installed it themselves.

Posted on Sep 27, 2010 AT 02:02 AM in Green Building • Video Library • (2) Comments

More about the Carlisle difference in rift-sawn and quarter-sawn cuts

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

The other day in our blog article Cut it like a pie or like a loaf of bread? , we told you how Quarter-Sawn Oak produced a more stable floor board, in addition to an interesting pattern in the wood.  What we didn’t say was that Carlisle’s version of Quarter-Sawn varies considerably from the usual.  The National Wood Flooring Association states that Quarter Sawn boards are any boards sawn at a 45 to 90 degree cut. The Carlisle difference is that we always cut between 60 to 90 degrees.  This results, according to our own Shanon Sterrett, in a more cohesive look to the finished floor.  And this isn’t the only difference. With Carlisle Quartersawn White Oak, you will see a difference and improvement in color, lengths up to 12- to 14-feet and, of course, our custom milling.

We can get a little more techinical about it in this document—Rift-PLain-Quarter_Sawn_Diagram.doc—which shows the various ways an Oak tree trunk can be cut—Rift, Quarter-Sawn, Plain-Sawn—and the various differences each technique will provide.

The photo above shows a rift-and-quarter sawn floor from Carlisle.

Posted on Sep 20, 2010 AT 10:45 PM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments

Cut it like a pie or like a loaf of bread? Learn more about sawing floor boards

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

We got this nice note from customer Amira Garbus of Northport, New York, who had some of Carlisle’s White Oak installed in her home.  “Your service was excellent. My phone conversation with your staff was very professional. My delivery was great and the best part is that my Carlisle wood floor looks magnificent. Can’t thank you all enough.”

Amira told us she was also thrilled that the floor was made in the U.S.A.

Amira’s floor was 1,100 square feet of 6-inch wide White Oak which had been done with Rift and Quarter Sawn.  What is Quarter Sawn, you might ask? Normally, a log is plain sawn, i.e. it is first cut into a rough square by taking off four sections of the outer bark and sapwood, and then sawn with a series of parallel cuts — as if a loaf of bread were cut lengthwise to yield long slices. Grain-wise, this typically gives a floor a little bit of everything: straight lines as well as a variety of swirls and “cathedral patterns” — several swirls inside one another. This is the way most floors are cut.

Quarter sawn cuts generally only apply to Oak and a few other hardwoods. They are made by first cutting the log into four pie-shaped wedges and then making a series of cuts which are more or less perpendicular to the tree rings, which produces straighter grain. Without getting too technical, let’s just say that quarter sawn White Oak produces more “rays” or “flecks,” which is the hallmark look of Mission furniture/cabinetry. In addition to being visually interesting, this grain pattern produces extremely stable boards.

The photo to the left is a nice example showing the difference between the two, a beautiful mixture of quarter sawn, rift sawn and plain sawn White Oak. Note the contrast between the various grain patterns.

Posted on Sep 16, 2010 AT 08:21 PM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments

The great views at this ocean retreat now include White Oak floors

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

You might want to drop whatever vacation plans you have and get yourself booked into this ocean retreat on Vancouver Island .  Not only are our beautiful original White Oak floors installed thorughout this vacation home, the place seems like the kind of place that would be beautiful if it was papered in newspaper.  The home is on Nannose Bay and owned by Marlies and Todd Venier, who had our floors installed in late winter of this year.

The wood floors you see in this stunning slideshow (see the living room and bedrooms in the photos) are all Carlisle floors, done in 7-inch widths with slightly hand-scraped edges and a saw kerf.  (You can read about both those techniques right here.) The floor was delivered to the Veniers pre-finished with a Sturbridge Brown Stain.  It was installed by Gary Landry of Acer Hardwood, who tells us he was quite impressed with our miling and finish work.

Posted on Sep 08, 2010 AT 12:23 AM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments