A couple of hardwood areas needed special repairs. Apparently, during the carpeting process the installers felt it necessary to remove a few floorboards, which they patched with plywood. That's fine if it's hidden under a carpet but not so cool if you're gonna be exposing the floors.
Trouble is, that flooring isn't made anymore. It's all American white oak cut in two-inch by half-inch boards with tongue-and-groove. Oak flooring isn't hard to find, but it's tough to get the right dimensions. Modern T&G flooring is either wider, thicker, or both. We needed an exact match.
None of the local lumberyards had any good options, and the local floor stores came up dry, too. A local mill could make 'em for us, but the price would be prohibitive. Finally, we came across one source that could get us a small amount (about 20 square feet) if I paid in cash and didn't need a receipt. My favorite kind.
A little cutting, trimming, and shaping later, we've got our replacement boards. They don't seem to take stain quite as readily as the original boards, but that may be because they're newer/younger. We're pretty sure this floor was originally laid in 1936, so the wood itself is probably around 100 years old. A second stain coat may do the trick.
Here you can see the new and old boards together. The foreground and upper left are old wood; the upper right has the new stuff. There's a seam between the two areas because that's how we found it. The previous owners had evidently cut the floor and/or moved a wall in this area. We can't eliminate the cut but at least we can match the wood as closely as possible and then put a threshold strip over the seam.
Trouble is, that flooring isn't made anymore. It's all American white oak cut in two-inch by half-inch boards with tongue-and-groove. Oak flooring isn't hard to find, but it's tough to get the right dimensions. Modern T&G flooring is either wider, thicker, or both. We needed an exact match.None of the local lumberyards had any good options, and the local floor stores came up dry, too. A local mill could make 'em for us, but the price would be prohibitive. Finally, we came across one source that could get us a small amount (about 20 square feet) if I paid in cash and didn't need a receipt. My favorite kind.
A little cutting, trimming, and shaping later, we've got our replacement boards. They don't seem to take stain quite as readily as the original boards, but that may be because they're newer/younger. We're pretty sure this floor was originally laid in 1936, so the wood itself is probably around 100 years old. A second stain coat may do the trick.
Here you can see the new and old boards together. The foreground and upper left are old wood; the upper right has the new stuff. There's a seam between the two areas because that's how we found it. The previous owners had evidently cut the floor and/or moved a wall in this area. We can't eliminate the cut but at least we can match the wood as closely as possible and then put a threshold strip over the seam.
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