Is it worth it? Reclaiming old hardwood floors to make stuff
Old century home we just bought. It has a mix mash of different wood flooring which is all being ripped up. I am debating keeping it to build things like coffee table top, counters for kitchen, picture frames, accent wall, and more.
I have some basic tools and have done some woodworking before but to be able to use this wood I would definitely need a joiner/planar combo. I don’t know the species of wood, very few nails in it as the install wasn’t done correctly. Alot of the smaller cuts don’t even have a single nail.
I only know if being 50+ years old makes this wood less than ideal for using for the projects I would like to do. Also, many of the planks are not wide like modern flooring but rather narrow.
After cutting the tongue and groove off on the table saw o would be left with approx 2″. The other room has wood that’s thinner. Probably will be left with 1-1/4″ after t&g is cut off.
About 400sq ft of material total. Various lengths. Longest is about 7ft. So what do you folks think? Worth processing the wood and buying a planar joiner to do it? I have a good DeWalt table saw and most other tools I would need. So it would just mean buying the jointer planar combo and o would be good to go.
Please let me know what you think!
Thanks.
Replies
My short answer would be yes. I would take into consideration storage of the boards. Keep them dry stickered and acclimated to your shop. I would consider buying a metal detector and nail removal pry bars, because a nail can quickly dull blades. What you plan to build with this wood is important. You could build quite a bit of smaller things like boxes and small desk organizers with narrow wood like you described. I don't own a thicknesser or jointer and just use hand-planes now, but I would still recycle the wood given the space for storage of the boards.
Thanks for your opinion. I do have ample storage as I have a massive old barn/garage and a seperate smaller shop. The wood will be stored in a dry spot but does get exposed to outside winter temps. Nova Scotia Canada here.
I’d be a little picky about what to keep.
An accent wall and some small pieces made from the home’s original flooring is a nice homage to it.
Some could be glued up on edge for a workbench top maybe.
Id pick the 20% longest and widest and least worn and let the rest go. Keeping an entire house of flooring could end up with stacks of the stuff in your basement for a decade or two. I still have mahogany cutoffs from bookcases i built 15 years ago in the basement. They are always to short 😊
Mike
I had the same thought when I moved into a century house a decade ago. Floors were maple and oak all sourced locally etc. I figured the costs not including my labor and it still was not worth it. Making skinny old boards usable for other purposes besides flooring is a lot of work and wear and tear on equipment/blades, lungs, etc. If you wanted to save a section of floor for a coffee table top or something for sentimental reasons that would make sense. If the wood is nice enough and you like it, the best way to display/use it is to restore the floor. The yield may also be pretty low depending on how boards were attached to the floor, wear, condition, how it was finished etc.
We already purchased all new flooring for the whole home. The old floor was not secure and the subfloor needs work.
I retired early in life, so time is there to do this stuff. I am 39. In no rush neither. I wear proper ppe when wood working so I am not worried about breathing dust.
I understand there will be a fair bit of work involved but I feel like once I setup each machine I can run through this stuff pretty quickly. The bonus is on the longest boards there is only 3 nails max. Anything smaller is either one or two nails and many boards have no nails at all they were just laid in place...
I would suspect the 3 nails on a 7 foot board contributed to the poor performance of the floor.
By all means buy a GOOD metal detector !
For my own house, I made a bathroom vanity out of the ca. 1900 subfloor and strip flooring (both fir) that was demoed for construction of the new bathroom. That was a lot of work to turn the wood into cabinet-grade 5/4 stock, but was a fun project. On the smaller scale, I have made frames out of the old flooring for gifts for family members, etc. Might not be worth keeping all of it, but at least a small stack for future use.
I used leftovers from a wood floor installation to make the top of a workbench. You could do something similar.
Did the same thing. The leftover Brazilian cherry made a hard and durable top.
Don
If it's just an excuse to buy the P/J I'd say go for it. Once you're in it you can always change your mind and just build a nice fire pit out near the barn.
You might want to add a pinpoint metal detector as well. One missed nail or other metal can have pretty costly consequences.
I will add some types of old wood flooring can be quite valuable and is in demand for people doing restoration projects and who want to be as authentic as possible. I'm not saying yours is but just saying it's a possibility.
For the amount of usable wood, the narrowness of the boards, the thinness of the cleaned up boards, and the time and labor involved, I wouldn't bother, personally. Unless I had a plan already in place for how to use it, it will likely just stay piled unfortunately years and years, before you finally chuck it.
Keep it. 100+ year-old quartersawn white oak flooring is *vastly* superior
to modern oak, including QSWO. Believe me, I tried matching new flooring
in one room to the old QSWO in another and found the contrast in the flake patterns pretty striking. One downside (for me anyway) is that in my old house, the 100 year old T&G QSWO floor is 3/8" nominal thickness, not the 3/4" you would now likely install.
Yeah, most of the oak floors around here that were installed in the 1920s and thereabouts were 3/8 thick, and face nailed, not tongue and groove.
How did you get from his mish-mash of old flooring to 100 yr-old QSWO?
I've used a lot of recycled wood in projects. It's popular now and even a selling point with certain clients. It's also labor intensive, cleaning and prepping for use. But it's cheap and often free --- and nothing beats free for cheap! I am very careful about removing nails and fasteners but every so often some bit of metal eludes detection. I've dinged blades and cutters. I don't use my best blades and sometimes hold off on planing a stack of recycled wood until I think it's getting close to time to replace knives. Old recycled wood often has a finish on it. I plane it off, it's too labor intensive to scrape and chemical removers are a mess. The old finishes are tough on blades as well and it sucks to hit a nail with a good set of planer knives. Once it's been processed then you can go back to your good blades. Most T&G flooring is cleat nailed through the tongue side only so most of it is clean, no nail holes etc. There can easily be enough value there to justify sacrificing a blade or a cutter here and there..
I'm doing a little side project, seems my son's and their families are all into fly fishing so I decided to make a bunch of tackle boxes. I'm making them out of walnut that is all from flooring. Flooring is mostly back grooved so 3/4" flooring will net a 3/8" board, sometimes a 1/2"...perfect for boxes, drawer bottoms, drawer sides sometimes.
I also have a deal with a floor installer. If they do a solid wood floor installation there is often a bunch of leftover off cuts and sometimes full boards left over that would end up going to the dump. Sometimes an old floor was removed. He goes by my shop on the way home and he's more than welcome to dump the stuff here. What's good I stash away and what I don't want becomes kindling. Flooring is mostly oaks and maples but sometimes I get a surprise. Teak or jarra, walnut ..recently got a nice little stack of hickory boards. Taking into account the cost of material buying commercially anything you can get cheaply can make a difference.
400' of wood is not enough to justify a jointer planer purchase. If your going to continue to do projects then it certainly is. It's OK to spend any amount of money if its a hobby. It's only when your trying to make a living at something that you have to worry about the costs of things.
On total it's not 400ft it's 400square feet of usable material.
I am doing a lot of this house so will be making lots of built ins and cabinets as well. But for this material I am thinking accent wall, kitchen counter Bucher block style as well as the island, and coffee table. Maybe some small picture frames as well.
I took up my 110 year old redwood flooring to install underfloor heating. I made the 5” floorboards into frames for all the kitchen cupboard doors. They framed round 1/4” birch ply. I hard rubbed thinned water-based gloss white paint in leaving clear wood grain and a slight sheen. They been fine, clean and unwarped for 15 years.
Keep the wood brother. Prep it all, stickers and store it. Trust me, a project will come and then you will have the material to get down.
You don't sound enthusiastic about this. Could you use it as fire wood to heat your home? Could you sell it at a value that would make someone happy to work with it and put some cash in your pocket? Is there a charity nearby such as habitat for humanity that would want it as a donation (and you get a tax write off). Plenty of options other than keeping it.
A lot of work cleaning with those very narrow floorboards. I took up 12’ x 30’ of 110 year old original pine floorboards and made kitchen cabinets fronts with them framing 1/4” Finnish birch ply. I hard rubbed in thin water based gloss white paint so you can see the grain clearly and it marries the color of the pine and birch ply very well. It also has a slight sheen so dirt is easily wiped off.
If its maple and you want to do a butcher block style top with 5/8" or less thickness 2" wide strips that would be ok. But woodworking is labor intensive and time consuming. So making something with substandard material just because its "free" does not make sense to me. A coffee table top made with said material in oak is going to look just like a floor.
The examples that others have posted are not equal to 2" wide strips.
I purchased the flooring out of my son's school gymnasium when they tore down the school. It was unbelievably put down with finish nails rather than cleats and it came up. The labor has been intense, yes, but I now have it in my house. And I have about 600 square feet left over of hard rock maple flooring, and I have made several things for my family. My point is that it has been worth it because it 1) repurposed wood that would have ended up being burned or put in a landfill; 2) I have a gorgeous floor in my lower floor (about 2000 square feet) where our game room is; and 3) the various bookshelves, furniture, toys, and other projects I have been making are keepsakes with a good story about where the wood came from.
My granddaughters will have things made by grandpa, out of floor boards that their dad played on.
Repurposed wood is not perfect. If you want perfect, get new wood. If you want a good story and to use repurposed wood, don't worry about the blemishes.... Just make sure you have patience.... Good luck either way you go.
My advice: save that which you plan to use immediately, plus a small amount of the nicest stuff for future projects, and get rid of the rest. There is something cool about reusing and repurposing old wood and material from one's house to make something new. I've done some of this on my 175-year old house and it's wonderful. Certainly, an accent wall, picture frames and maybe a small furniture piece are plausible uses. Yet beyond those things, there's probably only so much you will ultimately want to create from 2 inch wide stock.
It will depend on the species, the amount of damage to the boards and the presence of any borer.
If you have insect damage, then the stuff is firewood. Sure you CAN make stuff and it might look 'rustic' but really that's just too much, especially if you don't have a very well equipped shop.
If the flooring looks nice down though, it is worth keeping and if you have free material then it matters little if you screw up learning.
That having been said, such wood is seldom kind to beginners - it will often move substantially once removed from the joists and may contain hidden nails and stones that can damage machinery.
Thing is, though - it takes a lot longer to make something that, 'character' from the being recycled aside, is rarely as good as could have been made in much less time from new timber. Not a problem if you really enjoyed doing it, but unless the timber is particularly nice or hard to get then it's hard to justify the time spent.
After you set it aside, you really have two good options. Buy new tools and dimension it up for yourself or put it all up for sale for a pretty penny.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16q62iwD30Joz8H9K0HJhXbPahc3y9Hd0
In this folder on my gdrive I have placed some.pics of this wood. Maybe someone here could attempt to identify what it is.
In one photo you will see some wood that I ripped the young and groove off. I randomly layered em and just clamped em to get a feel of what it might look like.
Wife and I think the wood looks great and will be moving forward to using it to make a variety of stuff for the home. First thing is kitchen counter and and island top.
Question: I should plane off the relief on the underside of the planks fully right? When doing the glue up I am assuming it will be a much better hold. If not I can take it down a touch to just clean em up and maintain the max thickness of the planks. What do you folks think? The relief is probably 1/8" so no big deal either way.
I have never done a glue up like this before. Is there a go to glue that everyone uses? I am going to need a bunch of clamps, suggestions?
Because it will be used for a counter top and will be exposed to water during cleanups. Will a water based poly be sufficient or a oil based is a must?
Sorry for all the questions but I am still relatively new to all this but I am really looking forward to the projects. We are excited to be able to recycle something from the origional home as we renovate the whole house.
The only reason to plane the relief off the bottom is if it will show, and you don't like it, or if you need thinner wood. For the purpose you seek 1" or so seems de rigeur so you might want to plane it off and then glue two pieces together. If you have a lot of less good looking wood, then put that underneath; alternatively, just glue a bit extra at the edges - no-one will ever know!
You need a waterproof glue. Titebond3 or equivalent seems to be popular, but I would use gorilla glue myself. It's not as strong but has a much longer 'open' time. Wear gloves - it's hard to get off your skin, and have acetone to hand for cleanup. Don't worry about the messy squeezout - it's a snip to clean up later.
PRACTICE - put the whole lot in clamps BEFORE you glue it. That way you know it will work and you have all you need on hand. You will spot gaps and know if they can be fixed. Gaps at the end WILL NOT come together, at least not for long. Tiny gaps in the middle are not an issue.
For clamping, this is a great excuse to start building a collection of clamps. Pipe clamps are great and cheap, plus you can make them longer or shorter in the future at very low cost. You will need one for every 6" of glue-up.
If money is no object, buy parallel-jaw clamps.
If you are skint, then get an old board larger than your panel, and affix a 4x2 to one edge. Lay out your panel on the board against the 4x2 and screw another 4x2 so there is a small gap - 1" or so between your panel and the new piece. Use wedges in pairs to apply clamping pressure. Parcel tape reduces sticking.
it is also worth considering some cauls to keep the panel flat, and biscuits to keep everything lined up.
As for finish, water based is as good as oil once dry, but oil will probably look better. https://stumpynubs.com/finishing-wooden-countertops/
Could it be cherry? Put a strip of heavy tape on the back of a board and leave it in direct sun tomorrow to see if the color darkens. Use the back because it has been "in the shade" for a long time and has no finish on it.
Looks like yellow birch, but does not look like old flooring, the engraving on the backside suggest it was pre-finished. Once cleaned-up for glueing it will be at about 1/2 inch thick, too thin for panels. It also is short, so to make a countertop it needs to be face glued and but jointed, seems like a lot of time, glue and wood chips to reclaim a rather inexpensive wood.
One pic looks like oak, and another like maple. It's really hard to say from the pictures.
Plane the relief off the bottom.
It's definitely not old at all. Prefinished. 20 years is my guess.
I will agree that it's not vintage and some of it looks like engineered hardwood, which isn't even fit for firewood unless you like breathing toxic fumes while it burns. So trash it, at least the termites will have something to eat in the landfill.
The other pieces appear at least in the photos to be very cherry like, but I'm skeptical since NA cherry is not often used in flooring, it's just too soft and expensive for such an application. The sunlight test suggested could provide some insight but many woods change color when exposed to sunlight. With so much flooring being imported today it could be something not native to NA.
I think where you drew arrows are just the tongues on solid wood. But the pictures aren't good enough to say for sure.
It could be the grooves, but if it is it looks like it's been heavily sanded. The top surface on some appear to be quite thin. As you said the pictures aren't clear enough to say with certainty. Either way I would not waste my time with it. I can't imagine after milling you would end up with much more than 5/8" probably less. The time and effort plus electricity cost, not to mention potential tool damage from one missed nail fragment make it a no brainer for me. Unless of course it gets permission from the better half to get a new tool. :-)
It's all hardwood. Just photos making things look a bit words o guess.
I ordered a planer and jointer as I have many other projects as well. I am going to attemp a glue up for a countertop with this wood. I won Lt be getting to it right away as other house renovations are on the go but I have stored all the wood and will post up the finish project when I get to it. We can reflect then and see if I agree with others and say the whole thing wasn't worth it or not.
The pictures don't reveal much to me, but certainly looks nothing like cherry ...too coarse grained. Likewise for maple and birch. Looks like rough woods I've seen used for pallets and such. Maybe elm or hackberry. Though my guess would be some inexpensive imported species.
Not worth the hassle based on the photos that have been posted.
As I was removing more flooring I found a lable and finally a stamp identifying the specials of wood and it's mfg. The company is located in Muskoka Ontario. It's birch flooring.
Just wanted to share the details for those who were attempting to guess what it was. Thanks
Hey !
For your own work it's always worth the hassle. Hang onto every piece of wood you have room for. Something always comes up eventually that some piece of wood that you have laying around will be useful for.
I was in a similar situation. Bought a house from 1930, contractor tore out the attic subfloor and replaced with cheap plywood, and left a giant pile of old pine boards (some over 12’ and in decent shape, given tbat they had been ripped out of the joists and thrown out a third-story window. When the first snow came a week later, I went out in the dark and threw what I could in the shed. I figured someone might want this wood, maybe I could sell it .
This was about 18 months ago and, at the time I hadn’t touched a saw or piece of lumber since elementary school shop class.
Turned out that, as I was forced to become more hands on (/handy) with our endless old house renovations, I developed a new woodworking hobby. In short, I was the someone who might want these boards. They are knotty and warped and full of nails and nail holes, but I have used, and continue to use, the old subfloor to practice my hand planing, as low-stakes material for new types of projects (various stools, stuff for my kids) and as replacement patching wood in my ongoing renovation of the 29 double-windows.
So while my advise comes over after your original post, and with a overly-long preamble, it is simply yes, of course, keep whatever you might use and use as much as you can. And whatever you don’t use, someone else might want it.
I once had a friend wryly quip to me that he didn't need a hobby; he had a home. I laughed and completely understood. Good for you on picking up a new "hobby."
I live a province north of you and have an old house. Was there anything below the floor you are pulling up. Remember boards were used for the same thing sheet goods are for now. The subflooring. Our house has maple floors 2 inches max width and it is local maple. Underneath that is the rough cut wood that would be the subflooring.
The subflooring wood is not good for much, it is usually spruce or whatever else and was often milled on site. It is the same wood that was used in our barn. So if it is larger boards of 3 inches to a foot it was the subfloor. The local maple is nice wood and was often used for flooring.
Being grown in this are means the tree grew slow, hence the skinny boards for flooring. Most of the white oak in my province was used in the shipbuilding industry not long after colonization. We still have some red oak but the white is history.
Nova Scotia was a shipbuilding place as well but they had a much greater diversity of woods. The old island maple is hard and chippy but often has interesting grain. Those square nails are a pain to remove though and the boards get well broken. I do not know what the smooth boards you had in your earlier pictures were, I think it must be modern or non-wood or something.
If you are in a standard sort of dwelling any flooring intended as such was probably maple unless the house was owned by some very wealthy folks. The general standard of living was pretty bleak here in the maritimes a century or so ago unless you were quite wealthy and most were not.
I have about 800 ft.² of maple that was recycled from a lumber mill up in Washington. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of time. I used a drum sander to get rid of the grit. A lot of planing and jointing and ripping off the tongues and grooves to get boards about 7/8 of an inch thick and about 2 inches wide. If you take the time to do it, when you're done you could have some really pretty stuff. So far I have used it to make countertops glued face-to-face about an inch and a half thick and it turned out really well, so good luck with your project.
Y'all know the OP was 18 months ago, yes?
Well, apparently, some folks are still looking at it.
I think so, it's so pretty.
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