Prefinished Wide Plank Floors That Fit the Budget

A Note From Goat....

We are running some absolutely stunning prefinished wide plank pine flooring right now; or as Shelley would put it, “slap your momma good.”  I recently swung into a few of the “big box” stores to check out some of the prefinished flooring being offered.  I did get a few weird looks while out; like I was the first goat to peruse the flooring department!

I was amazed at what I found, and not in a good way.  Narrow widths and short boards for over $6.00/sqft!  Everything was offered with a “nice,” shiny, plastic-looking finish….I hope you are catching my sarcasm there because I’m laying it on pretty thick.  These floors are obviously not meant to be lived on; rather worried about because something that shiny is bound to scratch and it will not be done gracefully.

My guys are running prefinished wide plank pine, up to 10” wide boards, for UNDER $6.00/sqft!  The longest length I saw in the stores was 5’-6’; we run our prefinished flooring in lengths up to 12’.  Our custom oil finish gives the floor just the right amount of sheen while offering unmatched “ease of maintenance.” A scratch that would normally ruin a prefinished floor simply adds a little character our floors.   While I was in the stores I was also unable to find the guys offering custom, hand-distressing to the floors.  We have perfected numerous distressing techniques to give your floor an authentic, time-worn feel.  Since we do all distressing by hand we are able to truly customize the floor just for you.

Here are a few colors currently being offered with more on the way!

Latte

Old World

Aged Patina

"Sold American"

"Sold American," was the famous saying of famed tobacco auctioneer, L.A. "Speed" Riggs, who became the voice of the American Tobacco Company and Lucky Strike in the late 1800's / early 1900's.  In its heyday, American Tobacco was producing 80% of the tobacco products used in the United States.  It was one of the founding 12 members of the Dow Jones in 1896 but became infamous due to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

We were lucky enough to salvage the massive heart pine timbers from one of the warehouses in downtown Louisville, KY.  The timbers are all extremely dense heart pine with growth rings almost too tight to count.  Mostly 11” x 17” x 22’, they are producing perfectly clear quarter sawn boards as well as awesome wide plank flooring not usually available in such a premium grade.

Choosing the Right Wood Floors for Children

If you are the proud parents of babies or young children and are considering the installation of wood flooring, no doubt you’ll have questions of safety and appropriateness spinning round your mind.  There is little doubt that the hygienic benefits of a wood floor are much greater than carpeted flooring. You have probably removed carpet and are aware of how much dirt remains in carpet even after a thorough cleaning.

 

When it comes to allergies, wood flooring is the perfect choice.  Some researchers believe that eliminating the sources of allergens when children are young may help reduce the likelihood that they will develop allergies later in life. Studies have also shown that even if someone in your home already has allergies, they may experience improvement after allergens have been reduced or eliminated by replacing carpet with wood floors.

The appropriate finish and corresponding environmental risks are always major concerns for parents of small children or babies when considering the purchase and installation of a wooden floor.  By purchasing Authentic Pine Floor’s prefinished flooring, you will eliminate the dust, dirt and fumes caused by the sanding and finishing of your wood floors.  Our wide plank flooring is oil finished which allows the floor to withstand the Tonka Truck or Barbie’s Dream Car, and whatever else your child may throw at it.  The oil penetrates the wood and protects from within.  When the floor is scratched, and ALL wood floors will scratch, the oil allows for easy spot repair; that scratch will look like it has been part of the floor forever.

Authentic Pine Floors only uses oil with ZERO (0) VOC’s, reducing the risk of toxic emissions.

Wide Plank Reclaimed Wood Floors for Traditional Style

A Choice grade reclaimed heart pine floor is perfect for more traditional style homes.  The tight grain and warm colors compliment the more ornate wooden furniture, antique artwork and fixtures found in this home.  This wide plank random width floor was finished on-site with tung oil.  The exposed tavern grade beams, also cut from antique reclaimed heart pine, provide a perfect contrast the more formal floor by introducing even more character (knots, nail/bolt holes, color variation and checks) to this gorgeous home.  

Wide Plank Floors work well with Contemporary Style

The contemporary look utilizes a wide variety of design elements; ranging from creatively shaped and placed windows to furniture pieces made from wood, glass, metal and polymer products.  Wanting to keep a cleaner look, this customer selected our Colonial heart pine.  With high heart content and minimal knot content; our wide plank Colonial heart pine was the perfect selection for this contemporary style home.  Our wide plank heart pine is available both prefinished in hand-rubbed oil and unfinished.  Regardless of your style, “Authentic Pine Floors” are created by our craftsmen to suit your personal taste.  

Prefinished Wood Floors

We all cringe at that first big scratch in the new wood floor; mainly because of what it will take to fix.  With polyurethane, you are refinishing the entire floor just to fix that one small scratch. We have been working with Woca Oil for a numbers of years; seeing the interest in oil finishes rise each year.  While we’d love to take all the credit for our adoption of the oil finish; most of the input used in the decision came from you, our customers.  Pine is one of the few woods that look good with some natural wear & tear.  Using a finish that embraces that character rather than fighting to hide it just seems logical.  Oil finishes provide a warmer, more natural finish and eliminates the sheen of polyurethane.    An oil finish allows you to touch-up/maintain small areas as needed.  Oiled wood floors also should never be re-sanded or re-finished.  Treat your oiled pine floors like a piece of antique furniture.  Just apply more oil & embrace the character. 

Grandpa Mac

Well-polished with lots of character, just like Grandpa Mac; this new prefinished wood floor exemplifies a unique option for wood flooring.  Made from reclaimed pine, it is prefinished and available in widths up to 10 ½”.  The finishing is done by hand using a multi-stepped process that gives the floor a wonderful patina and emphasizes the natural character of the reclaimed wood.  As always, the finish we use contains zero VOC’s.  Give us a call to see samples of this great wood floor named after an awesome man.   

Ping pong anyone?

We just finished our gorgeous new showroom “table.”  Technically it is to be used for measuring plans but as you can see we’ve made a few modifications.  And yes, we are offering discounts for stopping by the gallery to give us a good game of ping pong!  We selected choice grade antique/reclaimed heart pine for the top.  The legs are poplar, reclaimed from the barrel rails in the Old Crow Distillery.  We left the legs “as is,” offering a fantastic contrast to the finished/formal look of the top.  We’ve had a few nice offers on this one but we’re just not ready to give up our daily ping pong game yet, but we’ll be happy to build one just for you!

Reclaimed Wood Compliments any Design Style

Reclaimed wood floors compliment any design style.  Our friends, Brett and Amy Tulacro with Tulacro Development in Bethesda, MD, recently completed a remodel of a Georgia Colonial style home and used our Old Dirty Goat reclaimed wood floors. 

Amy describes the house, “It has a retro feel with the floors but the style is definitely more clean and contemporary with an industrial edge. The floors really warm it up and I have to say that they inspired the entire project as we worked around the colors. The kitchen cabinets are cherry painted black and distressed so the warm cherry wood comes through which ties them into the floor. The hall walls were painted a warm white to showcase the floors and be a backdrop for them.  We LOVE them and want to thank you all so much for making them for us. They are truly amazing!!!”

Amy was a lot of fun to work with & I think she did an awesome job on this home.  The color variation & character of these wide plank reclaimed floors really look great. 

Wood Floor Finishes

There are tons of options out there for wood floor finishes but we are hooked on one we discovered a few years ago.  Would you finish your new floor with vegetable oil?  Sounds crazy right?  Not so crazy if you’re looking for a 0% VOC, natural-looking finish (low sheen) that is easy to touch-up and maintain.  Our Authentic Oil finish is based on vegetable oils with non-aromatic hardeners.  The natural oil finish penetrates the pores of the wood and literally seals the wood from within.  Unlike with polyurethane, small scratches and dents from regular wear and tear are far less noticeable with the low/natural sheen of a natural oil finish.  Instead of screening/sanding the entire floor just to fix a small area, you can touch-up only the areas where it is needed.  We use the natural oil finish on all our prefinished products which also makes a great option if you’re ready to refinish your existing floors.  If you are ready to stop worrying about your wood floors and start living on your floors, give us a call to discuss a natural oil finish. 

Reclaimed Heart Pine

Those in the know ask for Old Crow!  We got such a great response on the material and the story that we just had to get some more.  The Old Crow material will be used to produce both our solid and engineered antique heart pine.  Here is one of the trucks leaving the distillery.  Not exactly something that will fit in the back of a pickup truck.  Due to the history, this material is in high-demand and will go quickly.  Give us a call to learn more about our Authentic Old Crow floors.

Hand-Scraped White Oak

We just finished hand-scraping some gorgeous wide plank white oak flooring (6” – 8”) for a customer in Missouri.  Each plank is handled by multiple craftsmen to produce a floor with character like no other.  Each person scrapes slightly different so nothing looks repetitive.  It is also interesting seeing the different techniques used for oak that are not used when we scrape pine.  Oak requires more linear scraping where pine will accept a little more cross-grain scraping.  We see more chatter marks in oak and we definitely spend more time sharpening blades when we scrape white oak!   

Jekyll Island Convention Center

Antique/Reclaimed heart pine looks good in any setting, from residential to commercial.  Our antique/reclaimed heart pine was just selected for the Jekyll Island Convention Center.  They decided to use a mixture of our choice and tavern grades; showcasing both the formal and rustic character of antique/reclaimed heart pine.  Character that fits perfectly with old-time charm of Jekyll Island.  Next time you’re on vacation on Jekyll Island, be sure to stop by the convention center to check out our Antique/Reclaimed heart pine.

Reclaimed Heart Pine - John Deere

Recently, we reclaimed some really dense Heart Pine from an old structure just outside of Kansas City.  The building has been used by several businesses over the past 130 years; most recently as a warehouse for John Deere.  Most of the timbers are 6” x 14” and are producing some gorgeous, character-laden 5 1/8” wide plank flooring.  We will only yield about 15,000 sq. ft. of flooring from this project; most of which will be offered as a prefinished wood floor. 

Charleston Heart Pine

For anybody that thinks Heart Pine Flooring is too soft and won’t last; they need to take a trip to Charleston, SC.  My family and I just got home from a great trip to the area .  We spent a good bit of time downtown ,  enjoying the old homes and buildings.  Almost every restaurant, bar, hotel,  and  home we  visited  had heart pine  floors .  Many of the floors were original ,  dated back around 200 years or so.  The old heart pine floors still look great & should be around for many more generations to come.

Wide Plank Oak

Wide plank oak flooring made from your own trees that were blown down in a tornado?  Yep, we can handle that.   A few weeks ago we processed about 4 truckloads of oak logs that belonged to a long time customer of ours.  His farm in S. GA was hit hard by a tornado late this spring so he sent the usable logs to us thinking that he could use the boards in a hunting lodge on the property.  The 4 truckloads of oak yielded close to 5000 sq. ft. of wide plank oak flooring up to 12” wide. 

Huffman Mill Pike

We just finished up about 15,000' of this awesome reclaimed oak plank floor.  It was salvaged from a horse farm off Huffman Mill Pike outside of Lexington, KY.  It was a ton of work but the finished product is beautiful and well worth the effort.  Because of it's natural variations no two planks are alike, each one having a different character, color, and surface.  Michael @ Cottrell photograghy was nice enough to take some great photos that we can show you soon but for now here is the before and after.