How to Distress Pine Flooring
Posted in Construction How-To Floors Hardwood Finishing Construction How-To Flooring Installation Floors Punch! Floors Floors Hardwood Punch!
By Matt Weber
Give Wood Floors a Weathered Finish
Like fine wine, some things get better with age, and a popular trend in wood flooring is to impart a distressed look to the wood surface, which adds a weathered, timeworn appearance with a great deal of character. This practice can be applied to “age” new floors or to provide older floors a fresh texture. Heartwood Southern Pine is an excellent candidate for such a project because of its richly toned bands and, as a soft wood, it is easy to dent and ding for the desired distressed appearance.
Not only does a distressed pine floor look beautifully old-fashioned, it’s an easy wood to work and is comparatively affordable for solid wood flooring. When planed smooth, it requires little sanding before finishing, which is a welcome timesaver for pro installers and DIY’ers.
What’s more, by definition a distressed floor disguises accidental impact damage in the future. Although I installed prefinished flooring throughout much of my house, I cringe every time I see a scratch or a small dent that wasn’t there when I installed it. So, when it came time to install flooring in what will be a nursery and ultimately our children’s bedrooms, visions of toys and dishes hitting the floor danced through my head like sugar-plums. A durable distressed floor in a couple of kid-prone rooms seemed like a natural choice.
First Steps
We were replacing a carpeted floor over a plywood subfloor, so some quality new flooring was in order. Our local supplier of choice is Littrell Lumber Mill (www.littrelllumbermill.com) from Decatur, Alabama, a family-owned business where a very small percentage of logs are even considered for the mill’s heart pine products. Only 60- to 80-year old trees with the right characteristics are suitable, and Littrell Lumber Mill guarantees 50 percent of the board face to be heartwood. Littrell heart pine is available in tongue-and-groove (T&G) dimensions from 4 to 10 inches, plus V-joint and double V-joint boards, as well as stair materials.
For DIY installers, Lumber Liquidators offers an installation kit for T&G flooring, which includes basic essentials—a plastic tapping block, a pull bar and 20 adjustable spacers.
