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.

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

Posted by Christine Halvorson

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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
Monday Morning Mailbag: Old School Style Hickory

Posted by Christine Halvorson

We thought this one stunning photograph tells the whole story on this project, a newly built cabin in Overland Park, Kansas. Our customer, Don Gill, worked with Carlisle’s Jason Wolfe to get this project done. The floor is done in 4- to 8-inch wide Hickory with a Tung oil finish. When he sent us this photograph, Mr. Gill wrote, “Check out your floor, it’s really impressive, to say the least. We moved in over Thanksgiving …… three plus years of construction. Thanks for your help and perseverance.”

Well, we think it’s pretty impressive, but we might have a bias.

Got questions about Carlile’s floors? You can request a brochure here: http://www.wideplankflooring.com/request-a-brochure/, but rest assured, we’re always happy to talk on the phone. Call us 1-800-595-9663 and we’ll give you a virtual tour of favorite floors and yours.

Posted on December 14, 2009 at 12:47 PM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments
Inspiration for choosing Carlisle pre-finished floors came from the dogs

Posted by Christine Halvorson

Former Carlisle customers who installed our wood flooring and stained it themselves have returned as customers. But, because of their dogs, they decided to go with pre-finished this time.

Marsha and Gregg Martin of Raleigh, N.C., had used our Longleaf Heart Pine Flooring on a previous project about three years ago and did the staining themselves.

This time around, they reported, with three dogs in the house they couldn’t imagine going through the week-long staining process that our unfinished floors would involve. (But, rest assured, our floors stand up to dogs, as you’ll see below.) The Martins chose a pre-finished floor in Autumn Leaf and, as the pictures attest, the results are spectacular. And the Martins may not be done yet. “Never know,” they said in an e-mail, “we may talk to you again soon.”

But, while we’re on the subject of dogs, if you’re thinking of installed hard wood floors in your home and you have some rambuntious dogs in residence, you should know that the our wood floors finished with Tung Oil are very durable. The oil penetrates into the wood and strengthens and protects your floor from within. Its pliability allows the finish to “give” with scratches from Spot’s nails, effectively withstanding hours of fetch and tug-of-war.

One of the greatest benefits of Tung Oil is its ease of maintenance, especially for dog owners whose floors require more upkeep. Tung Oil makes your floor stain- and water-resistant, allowing for easy clean-up when Fido drips water from one end of the kitchen to the other. For daily cleaning, simply vacuum up the dog hair and damp-mop the paw prints using warm water and vinegar. Depending on how active your pooch is, you may want to refinish your floors every few years. To freshen up your floor, simply clean it and mop on another coat of Tung Oil. Sanding is never required, and you can also spot-apply the Tung Oil to touch up Buddy’s favorite play area on the floor. It truly is that simple! We have designed our floors and Tung Oil finish to be lived on and enjoyed by the entire family. The result is a floor that is both beautiful and low maintenance, which our extended Carlisle family dogs can attest to!

Posted on December 3, 2009 at 10:12 AM in Hardwood Flooring • (0) Comments