@SJ McCarthy Thank you for the sheer amount and quality of info you provided! I appreciate this very much.

Yes, I did forget to say location and type of project. Apologies! This will be in Northern Virginia in the Piedmont region. New build over crawlspace/unfinished basement so we can start off on the right foot with whatever is required. We were not planning on home humidity control system.

Glue you say? This makes me very curious how they used to install old wide plank floors! Did they use glue ever so many years ago? I'm genuinely curious. The saying goes, "they don't make them like they used to," and comparing to how fast modern homes start to fall apart (at least the finishings) compared to old homes that have stood the test of time... It makes me curious how they did things back then. Whatever their methods were, they clearly worked. I can only imagine it is something more labor intensive (and would be even more costly) than this expensive gluing method. Sigh. If money were no object, I'd hire someone to do it the old fashioned way, whatever that would be, and I'd love to hang out with that tradesman and watch the work.

I'm not married to the 9" width. We currently have old pine floors now and they are the typical 2.5" - 3.375" size boards and we don't hate them. THB, that gluing business sounds like way more drama and money that it's worth (to us). I didn't realize, as I was seductively lured by the lovely wide plank floors of older homes I've visited, that much specification was behind the installation. Good grief! After reading everything you wrote, I now really like the idea 3"-5" boards and avoid some of the fuss. :D

"So...most bang for your buck: Engineered OR solid multi-width planks ranging from 3.5" - 5.5" in a CLEAT DOWN situation. These would then be site finished with the old-timer's finish of choice." - I think we might start shopping around between these two options, and already I'm leaning towards the 3.5"-5.5" solid situation. And maybe we'll also get quotes for reclaimed just to see if that's financially an option for us because that would be "the dream." I like the idea of a spreadsheet - my engineer husband will love that. 10 quotes! We have our homework cut out for us.

Last question/clarification. With these three options below, is humidity control system still necessary? I believe you wrote that it wouldn't be needed be for the reclaimed floors, but the other two options? If you can't tell we like low fuss, low maintenance situations and the idea of installing an entire system just to keep the floors happy sounds a bit too fussy for us.

• engineered wide
• 3-5" cleat down
• reclaimed wide

I will have fun looking into all of the finish options you mentioned. Just off the bat, they sound like they are right up our alley! Tough, well-lived, & patina, sounds good to me!

Thank you again for your time. I do appreciate it! You sound like a pro. You don't happen to be in the Northern Virginia area do you? If so, I have a row on a spreadsheet with your name on it! Ha! ;)

I am currently renovating a 180 year old house and have pulled up the hardwood flooring to expose the wide pine floors below. Those floors had never been finished. They have shrunk to leave some wide gaps, which I don't find objectionable. It appears that the legs of the kitchen woodstock wore deeply into the pine. You can still find mills sawing full 1" pine boards, so if you're adventuresome, you could go that route with little or no finish.

@Seabornman How neat! I love old houses so much. That's are #1 choice, but with the housing market the way it is... I don't know if we will have any luck anytime soon. We might rent for a year to see if the market settles down a bit and wait for one to come along. But we are considering building just because we don't want to be waiting around for the perfect house indefinitely. We want the next place to be very long term, at least 20 years if we have our way. So neat you're working with a 180 year old house! We've found some interesting things behind the walls of our current 1931 house. Neat to see the way they used to build 'em once you open up the walls. I bet you're having a blast!

kristen, have you looked into fumed and hand scraped oak? I think that would be the older look you're after. would 7" instead of 9 work?

why not check your local salvage / flooring places for reclaimed wood floors?

reclaimed heart pine

don't know how much money you plan to throw at it, but SJ is the flooring expert on this site.

good subfloor glue and nail install

Old days, they did this:

tongue-and-groove installation, the nails are driven through the tongue, forcing the boards together; this also conceals the nail holes, creating an unmarred surface. The interlocking boards also were much more resistant to upward movement, which minimized irregular edges sticking up in the path of passing feet. Structural-grade tongue-and-groove floorboards, typically pine or lower-grade oak, were typically a uniform 6" to 8" in width, much narrower than the wider pit-sawn planks of the 17th and 18th centuries.

@Beth H. : Thanks for the info and pictures! I'm definitely not married to the 9" planks, especially after hearing how fussy they are. I just got lured into the pretty wide planks, not realizing how much the require (intense install and humidity control). We aren't fussy people and after learning all that, I don't think the wide plank look is worth that hassle and extra cash for us. I had not heard about the fumed/hand scraped! I will look into it! I'm now thinking we will stick with 5" or less in width, just to avoid the extra fuss. I would love reclaimed floors, I just assumed they wouldn't be the most economical. But we will certainly be getting quotes for this, as it would be the dream scenario. I love all things old, antique, and perfectly imperfect! :)

So they didn't nail through the surface of the boards? I swear the old houses I've been in I saw where they nailed through the surface. But I'm talking homes from 1920's-ish timeframe. I thought perhaps they just put boards down and nailed from the top down, but I must be wrong in assuming that.

Thanks again! Much appreciated!

some they did, some they didn't. it just depended on how expensive the home was since every single thing was done by hand, it was extremely laborious.

in the 20's I believe it was the tongue and groove and nails. rustic homes had the nails through the top. some were set in tar. before that, they would nail the planks directly into the flooring joists. in the 20's, they nail by hand w/T&G, fill the grain w/filler, sand smooth, and apply a shellac. they didn't stain the wood back then. shellac and then a wax for the top coat. coloring would form through patina.

@Sincerely Kristen Thanks for the kind words. I'm a cork flooring expert who has to know everyone else's business (flooring business that is).

It sounds like you are going over wood joists (eventually) if you build. The #1 thing with a house such as yours is the moisture control in the crawl space. Concrete topping with vapour retardant underneath the subfloor/joists.

Your humidity situation probably won't be 'too dry'. It will most likely be a bit too damp. That's OK...so long as things acclimate to reach a level of moisture equilibrium. For wood floors the manufacturers will state the moisture of the wooden subfloor must be within 3% of the moisture of the wood being installed (for flooring).

Today's mills dry out the wood in kilns. Those wood planks will then GAIN moisture in places like Virginia. That gain can be done in the build site. It can be done before or after the planks are installed. If done after they are installed you will have cupping or crowning. So long as the planks are allowed get all their stretching done (you are OK with how they look for the next 5-15 years) then they settle down very nicely. And THAT'S how things used to be done.

Homeowners ACCEPTED 'less than perfect' because that's the way it worked. They had nothing else to do but accept.

@Beth H. : That's so neat! And most definitely sounds laborious! Whew!

@SJ McCarthy Ah. That makes sense. I guess this is why they recommend letting the wood delivery sit in the house for awhile before installation? Maybe to allow the wood to somewhat acclimate to the humidity? Very informative!

One room in our house was redone at some point in time with oak - I think it's been at least 10 years. But currently we are in North Alabama and I've noticed the wood floors in that particular room will cup certain times of the year, especially in the areas where furniture sits on top (maybe it isn't getting great air circulation?). The crawlspace is still quite simple; just a loose vapor barrier laid on top the ground down there. Does have descent (passive) vents, but of course it's humid here and this house breathes. The cupping doesn't bother me. It is what it is and it comes and goes. And now that I'm thinking about it, the original pine floors don't have that issue (anymore, I guess.).

You've given me a lot of helpful info to bring to the table when shopping around and getting quotes. Half the battle is knowing the right questions to ask! Thanks again!

You can install live sawn white oak, wire brush and then apply fume or smoke reactive stain. If, you want more color, use a tinted reactive stain from Ciranova. Then top coat it with a colored magic oil.

You can layer up to three colors:

Color #1 - reactive stain

Color#2 - magic oil

Color#3 - magic oil

If, you want to bring the price down more, sub the live sawn with common grade oak. It can save you up to $2 per square feet.

@Beth H. : The final image you post of the installation. Is a project we did of reclaimed pine floors in Lexington, MA. We finished it with Waterlox afterwards. A lot my photos is cycling around the web, lol.

@G & S Floor Service

Thank you for the info! I will look into this. :)

G&S, really? how cool. you must do excellent work. !

We used. 8” and 10” pine from Authentic Pine Floors in Georgia in 1997. No glue. No glue. No glue. Face nailed with square cut nails. Stain mix of two colors to find shade we wanted. Hand rubbed, oil finish. Beautiful and period correct for my house. Golden retrievers, family, dinner parties, Christmas parties for 60. They aged gracefully and correctly.

Wow @remodeling1840! That’s pretty impressive. I have found some wide plants that have been quarter sawn and also aged/seasoned for two years and then maybe put into a kiln(?)! I think this would help reduce movement. But very impressive you did the wide planks without glue. Do you mind me asking if you had a humidity control system I. Place? The square cut nails sound like the cherry on top. I love to see those details. They add so much warmth to the house.

We lived in Florida. Wood moves with the seasons, so glue would not allow the movement. Since we laid the floors ourselves in 1997, am working from memory here. We had plywood subfloor down then stacked the flooring in the air conditioned house for several weeks. We face nailed only. I really wanted an antique look and we used cut nails. All those are hammered in by hand. After all the flooring was installed, I mixed two colors of MinWax stains, Puritan Pine and one other ( memory fails me) in a one gallon paint can (new empty cans are sold by paint stores and Lowe’s) so my color would be consistent. No one else can be in the house for over a week while the staining and oiling are being done. Authentic Pine Floors gave me a formula for the finish I mixed in another unused gallon paint can, but I think I would use straight tung oil now. Tung oil must have five or six applications with sufficient drying time between coats. This cannot be rushed. We used tung oil on the cherry floors we laid two years ago in the kitchen of our current house and love it. Our Florida house had carpet upstairs for noise control, so I estimate we had over 2000 square feet of pine floors. My sister used the same material for her house in the Midwest 16 years ago and the floors are still beautiful. My daughter has about 3000 square feet of the same flooring, finished the same way. We all have dogs and active lives. Some people age their floors by dropping chains onto the surface, spreading sharp gravel on the floor and walking around with work boots to scratch the floors, or you can (with extreme caution) roll burning logs onto the hearth area to put a few scorch marks. Then stain and oil the floors. We did none of that at any of our three houses, preferring to let the floors show our history. All wood moves with humidity. It is not much, though. It certainly is not huge gaps.

We did 12-20 inch pine With sq head-nails soaked in oil to turn them black. Floors are oiled. I made the mistake keeping paper covering while work continued. Right after we finished I was in another house being worked on, same floors as ours. No covering, work men dropping tools in & out of the house. By the time they oiled they looked like original old floors. Ours have not aged as much as I wanted over 13 years.

Thank you @remodeling1840. I have contacted that company! Thanks for the info. From memory, were the boards tongue and groove? Our (~1930) house has some original pine flooring (not wide planks though) and I think it is tongue and groove, but there are also the same boards on the walls (now painted) that were clearly NOT t&g as I went around with a caulk gun sealing up some of the larger gaps before painting (they had many coats of paint already). So interesting! We might build the detached garage and live in an apartment above until lumber costs return back to earth, before starting construction on a house. The little apartment might prove as a great opportunity to test this option out!

Check out Carlisle wide plank floors, they are a bit pricey but if you do it in the fall when the weather starts to get cold they will give you a great deal just to get stuff out of their storage before winter. They also have great customer service and can give you more information.

Thank you @yardbones - I believe this company was on my list for "factory-finished" options if we go that route. Good to know about them! We like a sale!

Our current house has original 1803 wide boards as walls in several rooms upstairs. Caulk is a big mistake. Again, wood expands and contracts with yearly cycles. Caulk doesn’t allow for this natural behavior of wood. Many years ago our boards were caulked by a previous owner and now the paint on either side of the caulk cracks and looks awful. During the winter, the cracks widen and in spring they compress. Leave the wood alone. It has its own life and should be celebrated. If it weren’t so much work, I would scrape every bit of caulk out. It ruins the line of the seams in the wood and looks artificial.

@remodeling1840 Not to worry. I didn't caulk the entire thing. Just the larger cracks. I mean there were knot holes that were left open. Eh... Anything a fat spider could get through got some caulk (and we do have brown recluse in this region). It's been three years with the caulk and no issues yet. As you can see in the photos I left a lot alone. And I don't think (?) anything looks artificial? Not IMO anyway. I don't think it could look anymore REAL, lol