Hi Y'all,

I'm from the Gulf Coast. I joined up to learn and this looks like a great forum for that.

I don't have much experience with wood flooring, only repairing and refinishing red oak strip in another house we own. I "inherited"some bamboo, brazillian cherry and some other stuff so I'm considering the different ways I may use it to replace some small floor areas in our residence. These areas are currently in sheetvinyl or carpet and on above grade slab. I'm soaking up all sorts of good info on how, and more importantly, how not to do things like this.

I also have a bunch of beautiful old quartersawed heart pine barn boards I rescued and I'm thinking about doing the front entry foyer with these. Anybody ever mees with material like this for a floor?

Thanks,
Don.

man, from a design perspective I don’t know if I would use bamboo and heart pine in the same house unless you are really going for that eclectic look. also heart pine dents and impresses easily so tell your party guests to leave there stiletto heals at the front porch.

Hey Woody,

This heart pine is SYP, very old and hard as a rock. It's almost impossible to drive a 16 through one of these boards without bending it. I usually screw it when building anything with it. The beams I have can't even be screwed without pre-drilling. But anyway, I decided there's way too much machining to do on these things to use them as floor. I'll keep using them as I have been... for stuff like a dang good-looking pumphouse and generator shed.

Bamboo is only going in some of the closets. For that foyer, I'm going to glue down some dark colored engineered oak with a tile border. The oak will match the trim and wainscot and the tile will match other tile I'm installing in various places.

Thanks for the design input.

Don

The pine you rescued is, for all intents and purposes, extinct. You have quite a treasure there. That kind of lumber cannot be found in forests. Only in old buildings or submerged in rivers and lakes.

Hi Chuck,

Yes Sir, I am very aware of what I have. It is really wild stuff. For example, I have two quartersawn 5/4 boards that are perfectly clear and look nothing like pine. They look like walnut but the smell confirms they are pine. They are 14" wide and 12' long and purplish in color. I've never seen anything like them. They were used as hayloft flooring. Edge nailed. Can you imagine the size and age of the tree these boards were cut from? Some of the boards were 18" but I wasn't able to save much of that. They were used at the bottom of stall walls and decking for a ground level feed room.

I have three huge stacks of this stuff, all stickered and under metal roofing. I'm going to use some of the 5/4 x 3" stuff next week as frames for a set of panel doors for a cedar closet that I'm building for my wife.

If I knew how to post a picture here, I'd show you what some of it looks like after brightening and finishing with oil.

Don