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.

Shuttercraft custom shutters for authentic renovations

Posted by Christine Halvorson

Carlisle floors are often being installed in old house renovations and for good reason. They can provide a timeless, authentic look that seems unattainable with other types of floors. Custom made wood shutters by family-run Shuttercraft, Inc in Connecticutt are used in old home renovations for the same reason. The company can customize its red cedar shutters for both interior and exterior use and deliver them either unfinished, primed, or fully painted. Shuttercraft shutters were used in four rooms of the White House to achieve an authentic look.

According to Colleen Murdock of Shuttercraft, many of her customers are renovating homes in historic districts and are trying to match the exterior look and color of shutters than might have been on these homes two centuries ago. An endless variety of cut-out patterns can be created as well. The photo below shows an old shutter with a cut-out that was matched to create an entirely new one.

Builders and contractors also come to Shuttercraft for customized shutters on new construction. The hinges and holdbacks can be customized and the shutter sized to fit non-standard windows and to be completely functional, not just decorative.

For more information, visit Shuttercraft, Inc online.

Posted on February 5, 2010 at 09:56 AM in Home Decor • Restoration Projects • (0) Comments
And now for something a bit different—Hickory wide plank floors combined with limestone tiles

Posted by Christine Halvorson

The interior design experts say there’s a trend afoot for “mixed media”—combining design elements that usually aren’t put together. To quote from Veranda Magazine: “Mixing materials is not a new concept, but it is certainly one that is gaining traction. Exhibiting a flair for the experimental, makers are moving away from the conventional with materials such as rusted iron, stone and untreated woods as they devise new ways to combine the handmade with the machine-made.”

Carlisle was happy to participate in this fun project from Veranda Magazine, which combined our 8-inch Hickory planks—which had been hand-crafted with a footworn look—with luxury bath tiles from the company Renaissance Tile & Bath. (That’s our Hickory in the photo to the left, supporting all those other mixed-media furnishings.)

The tiles are from the Renaissance Tile & Bath Winslow Series, and the style is called Sheridan Cream Honed Limestone. Here the Hickory is finished with Copper Mine stain and Carlisle’s Traditional Finish.

To the left is a sample of our footworn Hickory up-close:

So, what do you think of this mixed media? Something you would try in your home? We’d love to hear your comments; you can do so by clicking onto “COMMENTS” just below.

Posted on January 28, 2010 at 05:40 PM in Home Decor • (0) Comments
Velvet and Linen—and wide plank floors for the bathroom

Posted by Christine Halvorson

Last year about this time, the folks over at the Velvet and Linen blog were asked whether it was a good idea to use hardwood floors in a bathroom. Blogger and interior design consultant Brooke Giannetti answered just as we would have—“Of course!”

Ms. Morelan points out that wood can add a feeling of warmth to what is otherwise a room with a lot of cold surfaces. We couldn’t agree more. To the left are two examples of Carlisle’s Heart Pine in a bathroom. The first one is installed over radiant heat. (See about installing our floors over radiant heat here.)

Go check out Ms. Giannetti’s blog post for a whole array of photos showing wood floors in bathrooms. (The floors aren’t necessarily ours.) The person who wrote to Ms. Giannetti ended up installing one of our Eastern White Pine floors in her bathroom.

Posted on January 22, 2010 at 05:10 PM in Hardwood Flooring • Home Decor • (0) Comments
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 January 14, 2010 at 07:18 PM in Home Decor • (0) 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 January 12, 2010 at 10:56 AM in Home Decor • (0) Comments