hardwood flooring when you have more labor than $

[Yvonne's hubby]

This is how I came up with some really nice red oak flooring on the cheap, while salvaging some trees that had been killed by a freak hail storm the previous year. The hail came through just as the trees had leaved out in the early spring, stripped all the leaves and the redoaks did not recover. The following spring I got busy as soon as I realized they werent coming back and were indeed dead.

The first step was to get them on the ground.



Next they had to come out of the woods



Then after all that work getting this one out to the driveway it was time for a short break



While I had the fellers here milling up the cabin logs I talked them into milling my red oaks into 1X3's That was expensive part, they charged me 16 cents per board foot for the milling work.



Those 7 logs produced a pretty good stack of 1X3s, that would be the stack on the far left, left to "air dry" for a year or so.



Once they were good and dry, I ran them through my planer to slick the pretty side nice, and then tongue and grooved them, leaving me a whole mess of 15/16ths by 2 5/8ths boards to be nailed down when the rest of the cabin was ready for it.

It still needs to be sanded and polyed, but its a good floor just like it is till we get there. There is always something else that needs to be done first it seems.

[Tricky Grama]

BEAUTIFULL! Especially the wood, the wife & the dog.
Patty

[BlackWillowFarm]

Very, very nice! Love it! Those floors will never wear out.

[woodsy]

Its a long way and long time from stump to finish. Nice Job!!!!
Great job on the DIY flooring and post with pictures of the whole process.
Curious though how you did the T&G w/ 15/16ths thick wood, Dado?
I went through this same process and last fall got to lay the 300 sq.ft.+ of random width/species plank hardwood flooring, but i planed mine to 3/4 so i could use a router for the T&G w/o too much trouble,
It came out pretty good. A mix of Oak, Maple, Yellow Birch and a couple runs of Black Cherry.
Not to steal your thread but heres a pic of the fruits of my labor and the finish product.:
[IMG][/IMG]

[Helena]

Remember many years ago when we started our homesteading life..there was a couple we knew that had very little to almost no money to work with..If you ever wanted to meet a couple that could work the land..it was them. They needed floors also in their little home and ended up buying a good quality of plywood and painting them a brown in color ( not my choice of colors) but afterwards stenciled flowers..etc on them. They were really nice looking and I guess they put a polyurothan (sp?) finish on it. Lasted them for many years and then they moved on to another part of the country. I have often thought of doing this myself over the years. Cheaper than a "real" wooden floor and would be easy to install yourself !!

[MushCreek]

That's exactly what I plan to do when I build our new place. There are a number of good straight red oaks that need to come down for the house, septic field, etc. I plan to go a bit wider- 6 to 8", and face nail them with wrought nails. I figure the more rustic, the fewer tears will be shed over the inevitable scratches!

[RosewoodfarmVA]

That's exactly what we did for my parent's house, though we used some oldgrowth southern yellow pine and did wide boards random up to 16" wide. We had some old pines that were along fence rows and such that had somehow avoided the logger's saw for 100+ years! They produced some beautiful flooring with wide boards.

We air dried them for over a year, then planed and stacked them in one room of the house to acclimate a couple months before laying. Even then a few of the wide boards shrunk up leaving 1/8" cracks between boards, though we like the 'character' it gives, as the old homeplace that I live in (circa 1820) has cracks between the boards too, though the widest is about 12". To do my parent's floor, we bought a 20" planer from Grizzly, which was the best thing we could have done. It chewed right through those wide boards with no problem. I figured after we paid off the sawmill, bought the planer, etc, the total cost for 3100sqft of flooring, wide oak for kitchen cabinets, and lots of handmade millwork, doors, mantels, and built in bookcases cost us less than $3,000 for a 3100 sqft house! Not too bad as the Lowes estimate for the kitchen cabinets alone was $12k!! A lot of hard work but not many folks can say all the woodwork and flooring in their house came off their farm!

I'm just curious why you didn't go with wider boards for your house? It's quite a contrast with large logs then narrow flooring! Love that log house though!!

[Ravenlost]

Originally Posted by Tricky Grama

BEAUTIFULL! Especially the wood, the wife & the dog.
Patty

What about the pretty cat?

[Tricky Grama]

Originally Posted by Ravenlost

What about the pretty cat?

LOL! Missed it! Actually, I didn't want to upset Oggie.

[Sawmill Jim]

Right now you can find lumber random width one and eighth thick eight foot for from 22 to40 cents bf .If you got tools an time you can do it . Had stacks of it to work on this house with air dried for a year .Well someone came buy made me an offer so now i need to cut me some more . They are making rr tyes out of cherry an walnut now

[65284]

Originally Posted by Sawmill Jim

They are making rr tyes out of cherry an walnut now

Oh, no what a waste. It's absolutely obscene to be using those species of wood for RR ties.

[Yvonne's hubby]

Originally Posted by woodsy

Its a long way and long time from stump to finish. Nice Job!!!!
Great job on the DIY flooring and post with pictures of the whole process.
Curious though how you did the T&G w/ 15/16ths thick wood, Dado?

I built a "jig" that can be mounted on the "out" side of my planer that holds two routers, one cuts the tongue while the other does the groove and gives me boards of equal width as I run the one by threes through the planer on the final planing. this way I have equal dimension wood to work with. My Yvonne works for an industrial supply company and picked me up a matched set of router bits at her company cost. They were still a bit pricey, ($120 for the set) but they do an excellent job. Some how we milled out all that flooring without anyone taking any pics or I would post the operation.

[woodsy]

Originally Posted by Yvonne's hubby

I built a "jig" that can be mounted on the "out" side of my planer that holds two routers, one cuts the tongue while the other does the groove and gives me boards of equal width as I run the one by threes through the planer on the final planing. this way I have equal dimension wood to work with. My Yvonne works for an industrial supply company and picked me up a matched set of router bits at her company cost. They were still a bit pricey, ($120 for the set) but they do an excellent job. Some how we milled out all that flooring without anyone taking any pics or I would post the operation.

With home style operations like this, we are often too busy getting the work done to take pictures, LOL.
That sounds like a pretty unique T&G setup, chips were flying!
Speaking of time, to straighten edges and mill the boards, i think i spent the better part of 3 weeks to do 1500' of boards, including laying and finishing.
Quite rewarding though knowing you can cut it off the stump, mill it and finish it w/o it ever leaving the property All of the woodwork, walls, ceilings, trim at our place incl. cabinets came from the back 20.
I must be crazy....

[Yvonne's hubby]

Originally Posted by woodsy

With home style operations like this, we are often too busy getting the work done to take pictures, LOL.
That sounds like a pretty unique T&G setup, chips were flying!
Speaking of time, to straighten edges and mill the boards, i think i spent the better part of 3 weeks to do 1500' of boards, including laying and finishing.
Quite rewarding though knowing you can cut it off the stump, mill it and finish it w/o it ever leaving the property All of the woodwork, walls, ceilings, trim at our place incl. cabinets came from the back 20.
I must be crazy....

Thats so true, I get busy with the project and forget all about taking pics. I did manage to get quite a few along the way though, particularly of the early phases, working with the stone for the foundation, milling the logs for the log pens, stacking them up, but have noticed that I have very few of the finish work inside happening. And yer right about chips flying too! When the planer and both routers are running there is chips everywhere, and the noise level is pretty intense too. ear plugs are a must! We loaded up the shavings by the pickup load and used them for mulch in the flower beds, bedding for the chickens and such things. The slabs were used for firewood, I hate to let anything go to waste around here.

[heather]

LOVE the wood floors! We are about to do hickory floors -

Originally Posted by Helena

They needed floors also in their little home and ended up buying a good quality of plywood and painting them a brown in color,,,,,,,,,,,Cheaper than a "real" wooden floor and would be easy to install yourself !!

This is what we did when we built our place - I patched the plywood with wood filler - primed it & painted it with a tan deck paint - then I drew "wood plank" lines on it
Everyone thinks it's old barn wood!

[Alex]

This is from another post of mine, with the same title as this new post, so here is the same answer,

Our floors are 2 x 8 and 2 x 6 rough Pine (previously dryed or fire-killed -- not sure which.) The neighbors, the Gonvick brothers and father, sawed them and sold them to us 34 years ago for $200. I put tar inbetween (from a tube at Home Hardware), sanded them with a belt sanded and put 8 coats of marine varnish on them. That's for 560 ft2 on the first floor and 250 ft2 of the second floor.


Floors today. To keep up you sweep up the dirt, mop, and take off your shoes -- that's all there is to it. Right in the front of the picture is one of Nancy's beautiful braided wool rugs made from old wool blankets -- we've got lots of 'em all over the cabin -- the floors make them stand out.

Good Luck,

Alex

BTW We have wood every where except the bathroom, there we have 4 x 4 tile. And under Katie the Cookstove we have 4 x 4 tile (which you can see in the picture -- under the water bottle) and under Blaze King wood stove (to the upper left in the picture) we have 12 x 12 tile

[AngieM2]

All these wood floors are truly lovely and look so nice an homey.
Congratulations on such good floors.

Angie