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.

Monday Morning Mailbag: New home in California a “must-see” with installation of Hickory wide floors

Posted by Christine Halvorson

Here’s a glimpse at a vacation home in Portola, California, where customer Kathleen Schonder had ordered a Hickory floor in 5- to 10-inch widths. The home was build by Jeff Litz of Litz Construction. Kathleen originally heard about Carlisle floors through Country Living magazine. Carlisle prefinished the floor in Gingerbread. The floor is installed over concrete and radiant heat. (Read more about installing over radiant heat here.) Kathleen worked with our own Laura Leier, our design and sales consultant, to get the look she wanted.

Kathleen wrote us this note: “Awesome. Couldn’t be happier. A must-see!”

Posted on February 22, 2010 at 02:26 PM in Customer Stories • Home Building & Contracting • (0) Comments
New search engine helps architects, builders target the right suppliers

Posted by Christine Halvorson

We got wind of this new search engine that helps architects and builders find the suppliers and supplies that they need for their projects. We thought we’d pass it along, complete with a note from an architect who recommends the service:

As a licensed Architect, I am faced with the same challenges you are – finding and selecting the right products for my projects. I’m so excited about the new search engine I’ve found, I had to email you and let you know that it really works…and it is amazing!

It’s called BPM Select. No irrelevant returns like the major search engines provide, just a profusion of pertinent results every time. Plus, I can easily find general contractors, subcontractors and suppliers – right from the search results screen!

Don’t take my word for it, try it – BPMSelect.com. If you like it or have comments, please let me know what you think. As a fellow architect, I thought this would be a good site to share!

Karen Christensen
Registered Architect

Posted on February 16, 2010 at 11:50 AM in Home Building & Contracting • (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
Grab it while you can: Florida home for sale with Carlisle Cherry floors

Posted by Christine Halvorson

We thought this was kind of fun to pass along. A real estate agent in Florida, Barbara Remington, is in the process of selling this home, built by Essian Construction. Richard Shassian of Essian sent this link to our Dan O’Neil, with whom he worked on the project. Take this virtual tour yourself. You can see all the rooms featuring Carlisle’s Cherry floors, all of them finished with a Tung oil.

Posted on January 26, 2010 at 08:18 PM in Home Building & Contracting • (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 January 6, 2010 at 03:13 PM in Home Building & Contracting • (0) Comments