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Here's a few things to consider while designing the floor of your dreams.
We carry one of the most robust line-ups of wide plank flooring in the industry. While that provides for a lot of choices, it also means a tough decision is ahead. We offer rustic reclaimed floors, traditionally-milled live-sawn Woodland Cut floors, and contemporary European oak floors providing you with a wide range of design choices. Once you get past selecting a "type" you are after, color and texture are often are the main apsects to consider in making your selection. Broadly speaking, do you want a light or dark floor? Do you want a smooth or textured floor? These are very imporant questions to ask yourself when visualizing what you want in a wide plank floor.
Reclaimed hardwood flooring is made from wood recovered from dismantled barns, farm houses and factories that have outgrown their usefulness. Bay flooring, granary boards, roof rafters, floor joist and structural beams are some of the parts of a structure that flooring is made from. These materials were often originally harvested from America's virgin forests, making it authentic virgin timber.
Woodland Cut flooring planks are live-sawn in the forest from hand-selected, fully matured, slow growth trees. These planks are literally cut right where these trees were felled. The result of this process is tight natural grain variations, unique appearance, and coloration and character that would be removed by other modern lumber grading practices. Most modern hardwood flooring is manufactured from trees that were clear-cut for commercial development and only certain parts of the log are ultimately utilized so that mass-produced flooring can look identical from shelf to shelf and store to store.
Reclaimed wood is taken from turn-of-the-century structures including barns, farm houses and factories which have naturally aged. Woodland Cut flooring is milled from hand-selected fallen dead or standing timbers in our forests. The greatest difference is that reclaimed flooring will contain a richer color variation and character marks naturally acquired from years of exposure, while Woodland Cut flooring will have a more consistent patina.
Northshore Floors are prefinished engineered European oak floors that add instant style to any home. They are modern, environmentally friendly and dimensionally stable. Northshore Floors are completely customizable and can be individualized to create your own unique style.
As a custom supplier, we can provide any floor as either solid wood or engineered wood. If you don't know, engineered flooring is hardwood flooring that has a Baltic-Birch plywood base for added lateral stability. The hardwood on top of the plywood base is called the "wear layer." Our wear layer is very thick – over an eighth of an inch of solid wood! This is enough hardwood to be sanded and refinished several times. So why might you go with engineered? Extreme climate, humidity, or temperature variation. If your space has extremely high or variable humidity, then you will want to consider engineered flooring. If you are installing the flooring over radiant heat, you may want to consider engineered hardwood. If the floor will be exposed to water, or is in a vacation property that will not be climate controlled year-round, you will want to consider engineered hardwood.
You will have two options regarding finishing your floor. Do you want us to pre-finish the flooring at the mill, or do you want your contractor or installer to finish it on site? There's a trade-off here. Pre-finishing your floor means less mess and a faster and easier installation, but it also means less control over the final look, less possible texture, and a higher cost for the material. Site-finishing your floor will give you a high level of control over the final look, allow you to preserve rustic texture, and the material will cost less. The trade-off here though, is that you will need to pay a contractor to finish it, it will be messier, and it will take longer.
