We looked at reclaimed heart pine; beautiful, green, but VERY pricy. We considered tile and polished concrete; logical choices when working with passive solar designs due to their ther
mal mass. Since the main living space will be on a second floor, however, we decided not to put all that mass (thermal and otherwise) up in the air. Typical big box store hardwoods are pretty, inexpensive and natural feeling, but we couldn't satisfy ourselves that any of them were a responsible choice when considering forestry stewardship and the embodied energy of manufacturing and shipping from somewhere halfway around the world. Knowing of our green leanings, Beth Eason told us about Appalachian Sustainable Development and their hardwood products, so we checked them out. http://www.asdevelop.org/Sustainable%20Forestry.html Although not the cheapest flooring material we could find, this stuff was among the most beautiful so we decided to bite the bullet and go with it. The down side of working with Sustainable Woods like this is you can't go feel and see the wood till you've fully committed. So... we went all in. We've settled on 1100 sq. ft. of Red Oak.
According the Kevin Rowe who runs the forest products program for ASD, random width, 3", 4", 5" #2 common is the "gold standard" for sustainability! That's because you get to use more of the tree (waste less) and the trees don't need to be so selectively harvested as to get "select" grade or #1 common with less "character" (knotts and checks and burls). The wood was harvested in Northwestern North Carolina, milled in Southwest Virgina (Abingdon) and made ready for us to pick up ourselves. These boards are about as local (regional) as you can get here in East Tennessee.
The picture above is of Dave, our installer as he sorts through the bundles and lays the random widths out in a consistent 3, 4, 5 pattern. He's a very experienced local tile and hardwood installer who came highly recommended. As the work progressed, Dave repeatedly said "this is really nice to work with" or "this is nice stuff" and "wow, this is beautiful wood". We were growing more comfortable with our decision. We selected "Early American" Min-wax stain and Dave went to work. By the time he had finished the second coat of varnish, we were clear. This was one of our best decisions in the project so far. The floors are beautiful!
