Surface Blog

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.

How Heirloom Hickory hardwood floors are crafted

Posted by Christine Halvorson

Here’s an example of our Heirloom Hickory, placed in a home in Colulmbia, Maryland by Jim and Toni Johns. The Johns found Carlisle online and then decided to make a visit to our Washington D.C. showroom to see the samples up close. In January they placed their order and just last week they sent us these photos of the completed project.

Sales and Design Consultant Adam Whitney says that Toni Johns wanted to create a Colonial look, but also wanted a very hard wood, so Pine was not her preference. Once Adam and the Johns decided Hickory was going to do the trick, Adam made sure the boards were graded (selected) to have minimal knots. This is called “Heirloom Grade” and it means that those boards came from the very bottom tier of the tree.

“In mature, old growth timber, this is where there are the fewest branches, so it creates a cleaner look,” Adam says.

Carlisle further graded the Hickory is selecting the boards, and in the installation of the floor, to maximize the use of heartwood, which gives a more consistent color tone throughout the whole floor. That means that with this 7-inch board, Carlisle started with a 9-inch board and used a straight-line rip saw to take off some edge grain.

Then, the floor was prefinished before shipping off to the Johns, using our Gingerbread stain.

Thanks to the Johns for sending us these photos!

Posted on March 15, 2010 at 08:59 AM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments
Slow growth is a good thing when you’re turning trees into floors

Posted by Christine Halvorson

Ever wonder where the wide planks for the floors we create here at Carlisle actually come from? Primarily we get trees from sawyers who harvest them in New England, the upper Midwest, the Ohio River Valley and portions of the Appalachians. The reason for this is that the relatively cool, short summers of these regions allow the trees to grow very slowly. It takes years before they reach their maximum height and circumferences and that means their grains are tighter and more dense. It also makes them incredibly beautiful for use in woodworking, cabinetry and, well, wide plank floors.

Like the trees themselves, the relationships we’ve developed with local foresters and sawyers are a result of slow growth. It has taken us time to get to know the right people, those who share our environmental vision and goals of producing the best hardwood boards possible from forests grown and managed in a totally sustainable manner. These much-cherished relationships mean that no matter which Carlisle hardwood you choose, it will be the choicest and most beautiful that America can grow.

Posted on February 25, 2010 at 04:29 PM in Green Building • Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments
Small, independent sawmills assures Carlisle gets the best wide plank floor boards

Posted by Christine Halvorson

You might wonder how we select and process the trees that will become the boards that will become the floors we sell here at Carlisle.

In today’s “grow big or die” driven economy, it has become harder and harder for small, independent sawmills to survive. We use small, independent sawmills because we know they can assure us of getting the best boards cut from the best parts of the tree. The smaller sawmills can meet our special needs and our demands for excellence. Over the years, we have built a network of small, independent sawmills and built relationships with the sawyers who work at them. We consider them part of the Carlisle family. These sawyers carefully check each plank they cut for us, up and down and over and under, before they send it along for us to use.

Our boards are also the longest and widest you can find on the market. We also happen to believe they are the prettiest. Here’s a story about just one of the small sawmills we use.

Posted on February 18, 2010 at 04:10 PM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments
Pre-finished glued directly to concrete, a winner for this golf club

Posted by Christine Halvorson
One of the most common questions we get at Carlisle is whether or not one can put wood floors right over concrete. The answer is yes.

Here’s a stunning example of using our Cherry floors glued directly to concrete. This project, which was 1,500 square feet of flooring, is a private country club, the Rennaisance Golf Club in Haverhill, Massachusetts. We worked with CBT Architects of Boston on this project. The boards were pre-finished with an Amber stain.

Posted on February 12, 2010 at 12:13 PM in Hardwood Flooring • Home Building & Contracting • (0) Comments
Antique Hickory and WOCA white oil create custom look for J. Crew stores

Posted by Christine Halvorson

We thought you might be interested in seeing this new photo of a J. Crew store in New York’s Upper East Side. Yes, those are lovely clothes and those displays are all sitting on a Carlisle floor. We’ve been working with J. Crew for some time now. You can see much more about this in an earlier blog entry here.

Carlisle’s wide plank floors now appear in a total of five J. Crew showrooms, with a few more store designs currently on the drawing boards. The look you see here—-with its silver-gray tones—was created with WOCA white oil applied to Antique Hickory. The floor here was placed in a classic Chevron design, one of many options when considering patterns and parquets.

Posted on February 9, 2010 at 11:30 AM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments