Old Hardwood Floors vs New Hardwood Floors (window, install, bathrooms)
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I think it has something to do with the modern finish on new wood floors. It takes much more to show damage or even wear and tear. So they likely won't have the patina, even after its old. Because most people want them to look new longer, so they make the finish very tough.
Agree with the other posters. You need site finished hardwood.
We have site finished hardwood on our main floor. BTW--in one house we moved in a few days after the floors were finished--didn't have to wait weeks before putting furniture on the floors. We were just extra careful moving kitchen chairs in/out though.
My parents bought a 1960s house with identical, but 40 years newer flooring of oak, and just had brand new solid oak flooring added to an addition they had built, essentially the same type as in my old home put in.
Except for the age/patina, all three, 1920s, 1960s and 2016/17 are nearly identical in terms of grain pattern and finish.
My brother's house is 1720s and has wide pine plank, 10 -12". A totally different look.
I'm a-okay with engineered wood. We have site finished and engineered in our house. The brazilian cherry engineered reddens the same as solid cherry and if push comes to shove our engineered floor can be refinished twice. The only real difference is the presence of the beveled edges and the fact that you can refinish the solid floor more times.
To add a little to this, I have heard several people say a house has hardwood floors. They apparently meant just "wood" vs. carpet because the floors were then pine, a softer wood.
We loved living in historic homes with all hardwood, a real plus because in the old days, well off people had hard wood on the first floor showing their wealth. And often pine on the second floor where the private rooms would be. But homes of extremely wealthy people back in the day would have hard wood on the first AND second floors. Almost impossible to afford nowadays.
Doesn't have to be historic. My first house built in 1980 had hardwood floors that were sanded. Of course, this was before prefinished flooring and all the homes then had them and the houses weren't expensive then but they are now (outside of Boston market). They were beautiful oak not stained just polyurethaned. Loved them. Used to get down on my hands and knees and wipe them with murphy's oil soap and wax them with bowling alley wax (just the edges and the long hall). My husband put in prefinished flooring in our second house. It looked nice but yes, I could tell the difference plus they weren't as hard as the oak I had even though they were supposedly oak.
I have only ever lived in or bought houses built before 1950 and as such, I have grown used to "old" hardwood. One of my current houses has very plank wide heart of pine floors. Another I lived in had oak hardwood everywhere except the bathrooms. A house I have as a rental has a really cool herringbone hardwood pattern.
We have been looking at new houses/newer construction and I am really disappointed in the look of the wood floors. They just don't seem the same. I have heard that the "old" hardwood is farmed out and a "wood" floor now is not the same as it used to be. I don't mind newer materials like bamboo, but prefer not to have vinyl floors made to look like wood.
What is going on with modern hardwoods? Are there any brands that have the look of the "old" wood? Or would you have to reclaim some old floors to get the same look?
I have some hardwood, and it is real hardwood, not engineered. I suspect that the trees that produced the old oak floors are simply not available any more. My oak floors do indeed not look like old oak floors I've seen in older homes.
I could be mistaken, but I believe that white oak is not common now, and the red oak is used in floors and cabinets. I am not sure about this though. Perhaps a someone here has more knowledge of this.
The trees harvested many years ago and the way they were milled to produce the planks are a world apart from the more recent decades of oak flooring, even when you're looking at planked floors laid by the piece and finished on site.
In our current house, we have a portion that was oak planked in the late 1890's, then an addition in the 1950's, and then I had to re-do the kitchen floor in 1999. You can almost trace the history of the house additions by the differences in the oak planks/grain/color, all finished clear without stain. The entire house flooring was sanded to bare wood and refinished in 1999, so the clear finish is the same throughout.
The oldest flooring planks are a red oak which I'm told hasn't been available since around 1910. The floor has it's dings and flaws ... "character" ... but the wood is very different from any of the oak planks available for many years. When I went to sand it down, I was warned that it might not have enough thickness to sand clean and that I'd expose the nails. Thanks to decades of having been padded/carpeted over, the floor was not appreciably worn. However, it was stained thanks to the wet debris tracked inside (this is a working farm/ranch house) and pet "accidents" over the years.
Also, when I laid the new kitchen plank floor, I removed 7 layers of linoleum flooring over the original wood floor, which was completely worn down to the nails in places. I had to remove that old floor and beneath it was a sub-floor of the same wood planks. They were the same gorgeous old wood, but marked from the rusty nail holes from the worn out top layer.
FWIW ... there's an interesting article on Wood published in every issue of Wooden Boat (6 issues/year) magazine. Of particular interest is the differences described in the various woods/strengths/durability/resistance/grain/growth/density of available woods today to the woods that boats were built from in yesteryear. The focus of the articles is not limited to the concerns of matching modern woods to that of the traditional woods that must be matched in restoring older boats. Growth areas, weather patterns, species of trees, grain structure, harvesting techniques, aging/drying, and logging/milling are very different today than from years ago. I'd expect that similar scholarly articles are published in other Wood Working magazines ... but this is the series I've been following for years. Perhaps it will be of interest to you, too.
PS: "white oak" trees are from a family of trees, with at least 20 different varieties of what will be harvested and sold as "white oak" here in the USA. They are not all the same for strength, density, grain structure, or appearance, and a lot of variations will come from the regional soils/climates where the trees are grown. Just one of the reasons why when you're doing a laid planked floor that it is best to buy all the material at the same time.
I did a house restoration that had 1890's oak planked floors in Denver back in 1972, and due to cash flow/finances at the time, bought the oak flooring at three different purchases over the space of 8 months. The batches of bundles for each phase of the 3-story house restoration were each noticeably different wood, although all were sold as "oak flooring". They apparently came from different sources of oak. Fortunately, we were doing only one story of the house at a time. My then partner spotted the differences and had us re-do two floors, sanding the clear coats off to bare wood so that we could stain the floors to closely match in color. Of course, the grain patterns were a bit different, but with the color match that didn't stand out as much.
Side question...has anyone ever sanded and re-stained the engineered hardwood?
I know they say you can but does it really work?
depends upon the wear and damage, if any, to the floor.
I've seen several projects where it was more efficient and cost effective to replace the flooring rather than attempt to restore it.
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