Surface Blog

Do-it-yourselfers on Whidbey Island do a great job with their Carlisle floor

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Our Sarah Bergren got a nice note from Diane (and Bob) Billingsley from Whidbey Island, Washington. They ordered a Carlisle floor about one year ago—a 3” to 7” Anitque Oak and, as a cost-saver, they installed the floor themselves and did the final finishing with Tung Oil.  Good for them!  Here’s the note from customer Diane:

Hi Sarah:

I am not a photographer but these will give you some idea of how beautiful the floor came out in the kitchen.  We still have not put the great room floor down or the stairs and landing.  Do you think the wood will be ‘acclimatized’ sufficiently?  We  hope to get it all down within the next month or so….

We went to see a house that is being remodeled here on the island yesterday and one of the gals with us remarked on the floor.  It was a simple, tight knot (she said) pine, stained and sealed.  The owner said she was disappointed with the floor, that it was not a “Carlisle” but she had to live with it.   I didn’t say anything, didn’t  want to make her feel any worse, but I was beaming inside and Bob (my husband) and I exchanged a wink.  She and her husband are coming over to see our progress next Saturday…

Ciao,

Diane

Posted on Mar 05, 2009 AT 09:33 AM in By State • Washington • Doing Business with Carlisle • Home Styles • waterfront • Install & Finish: Stories/Information • Do-It-Yourself • Reclaimed Flooring • Reclaimed Oak • Residential • Site Finishing • Testimonial • Wide Plank Specialists • Sarah Bergren • (0) Comments

Carlisle: Proud to partner with Crown Point Cabinetry

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Many of you know that Carlisle collaborates with Crown Point Cabinetry—just up the road apiece from our Stoddard, NH headquarters, in Claremont, NH—to use our reclaimed wood in their lovely cabinets. In fact, they love to write about cabinets as much as we love to write about floors, and they do so over in their blog Wood Shavings. 

Crown Point also helps Carlisle when we need to showcase our floors in a real setting involving a kitchen. For example, Crown Point Cabinetry is used in each of our Design Centers, pictured below. In the Los Angeles and Chicago centers, the cabinetry shown is Crown Point using our Antique Chestnut wood, and in Washington D.C., we’ve used another in Crown Point’s line of premium custom cabinetry options.

Take a look below and we hope someday you’ll have a chance to visit us in our Design Centers. We also partner with Crown Point in creating our trade show booths. More on that in a few days. 

Below, in order, are the Carlisle Los Angeles Design Center, the Washington D.C. Design Center and the Chicago Design Center—all using Crown Point cabinets.

Got questions? Feel free to drop in here with your comments or questions by clicking onto “View or post your comments here” below.

Posted on Mar 02, 2009 AT 09:46 PM in Green Building • (1) Comments

A Sierra cabin gets an Antique Milled Barnwood floor

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Jason Wolfe, an account manager in our L. A. office, sent along these photos of a Carlisle Antique Milled Barnwood floor. The floor, in a Sierra cabin in Markleeville, California, was installed and finished by the customer, Mr. Ed McCormick. Thank you to Ed for sending along these photos!

Posted on Feb 27, 2009 AT 04:49 AM in (0) Comments

Carlisle reclaimed floors are part of the total “green” scene of LEED Platinum home in L.A.

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Dan O’Neil, our Flooring Design & Sales Consultant in the West Hollywood Design Center, sent us news of Carlisle’s participation in the first conventionally constructed home in Los Angeles that is Platinum LEED Certified

The house, a custom 1920s Spanish style home, was designed to meet the highest level of LEED certification while still showcasing the fact that “green” building can be architecturally interesting in addition to technologically innovative.

The floors Carlisle installed were all reclaimed Antique Oak with random widths from 3” to 9 ” and the planks had been recovered from an old barn.

Richard Byrd, the developer of the house and CEO of Byrd Development, Inc. in Los Angeles, used Carlisle floors for all the wood floors in the house. Carlisle’s Dan says he had met Byrd at last year’s Super Bowl game and later Byrd’s assistant tracked down Carlisle asa company that could supply the reclaimed wood floors they wanted for the house project. See more photos of the entire house, including more Carlisle floors, here.

Construction of the house was featured on the Planet Green channel’s show “Alter Eco,” and our very own Dan O’Neil says he got to be on the set every now and then as well. (Sorry, he doesn’t show up in this video.)

A fundraising tour and party was held in December at the home to benefit the nonprofit environmental organization Global Green.

Here’s Byrd giving a video tour of the house. He’s moving pretty fast but you can catch a glimpse of those Carlisle floors all along the way.

This is the first time Byrd had used Carlisle floors in one of his projects. Byrd said, “It was one of the sustainable products that didn’t compromise quality, design or performance. I have found a lot of green products do not have the resiliency that traditional products have. Carlisle is not one of them.”

Posted on Feb 25, 2009 AT 03:43 AM in Green Building • (0) Comments

Replace a Carlisle floor plank? Follow this advice from our experts

• Posted by
• Christine Halvorson

Janel, in our Washington Showroom, had a customer who wanted to know how to replace one of the planks in his pre-finished Carlisle floor.  The board that needed replacing was in the middle of the floor (visible) and this particular floor had the Carlisle hand-scraped edges. Erik Boos, from our Chicago showroom, and Rick Menard, from the Stoddard, NH showroom, weighed in with their advice on this project. Probably you won’t ever need to use this technique, but things can happen.  Here’s advice from our Erik and Rick on replacing a plank in an existing Carlisle floor:

1) Start by making two cuts in the board that needs to be replaced. Each cut will be approximately ¼ inch from the side and will run the length of the plank. This frees up the middle of the plank for easy removal because it frees the flooring nails on the tongue side and will also remove the grooved side from being locked in place.

2) Another diagonal cut running the length of the board from one side to the other will also help in removal.  This makes it possible to easily pull the board from the tongue and groove side without damaging the edges of the surrounding planks.

3) Next, any glue on the sub-floor underneath the removed plank should be scraped out as much as possible.

4) Taking a new plank of the same width, rip the tongue off, cutting from the bottom and just through the top of the tongue, not touching the top edge of the plank. Cut to the correct length, back-cutting the ends a little bit without touching the tops.

5) For the new plank, cut a length of ribbon or piece of Tyvek ®, and staple it to the back of the plank and bring it around to the top. This will give you a handle to use when you drop the new plank in place as a test.

6) If the fit is good, add plenty of glue to the back of the new plank, tap it into place and weigh it down for a few hours.

As Eric says, “Replacing planks is never fun or easy, but when done right, no one should ever be able to pick out the replaced board(s).”

Posted on Feb 24, 2009 AT 02:39 AM in (0) Comments