“Those floors were crazy thirsty,” recalls Young, who operates Broomfield, Colo.-based Young Brothers Hardwood Floors. The thirsty flooring hailed from a Kentucky tobacco barn, one Young’s Denver-area client was familiar with when growing up. Young estimates the boards, pre-milled for the flooring project, were between 80 and 100 years old.
After sanding the subfloor, Young used full-spread adhesive and cleats to install the approximately 700 square feet of rough-sawn white oak flooring. He hand-scraped some of the edges and filled in knots by hand before sanding twice with a multi-disc. “You don’t want to remove the texture, but you also want to make it smooth,” he says of his sanding approach. Young then applied a natural oil finish.
Although the finish he used was good for about 300–400 square feet per liter on a normal floor, the old barn boards soaked up about a liter every 100 square feet, Young says. “It was just their age, from being dried out,” he explains.
Young’s Colorado location has its perks—he’s a stone’s throw from several major suppliers. In this instance, RJ Symalla of Aurora, Colo.-based Pallmann was on hand to help grab a few additional liters of finish from nearby to complete the job.
With the flooring’s thirst finally quenched, the homeowner was ecstatic with the results, and Young walked away with a new set of skills and appreciation for reclaimed flooring.
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“Don’t go in thinking like you know everything,” he says. “Read. Do research. If you’ve never done one of those floors, talk to somebody who’s done one.”
The experience also served Young well on social media, as a photo of the floor became one of his most popular, garnering nearly 500 likes (he averages around 100 likes per posts). But although he’s become a skilled reclaimed flooring craftsman since this job, when it comes to knowing exactly which photo is going to blow up on Instagram, Young, like everyone else, is still figuring it out, although there’s one type that tends to do well: “It’s always the photos I take while backing out the door when I don’t think anything about it,” he laughs.
Suppliers:
Abrasives: Norton Abrasives | Adhesive, Moisture barrier: Wakol | Buffer: Lagler North America | Finish: Pallmann | Multi-disc: Bona US | Orbital sander: Festool | Vent: Aria Vent
Stephen Young
