A New Yankee Floor

Norm Abram, that talented master carpenter and all-around great guy I had the pleasure of working with for 17 years, is building a kitchen from scratch during the current New Yankee Workshop season. Although viewers won’t see the final product until the last episode is broadcast this spring, TV being what it is, the actual kitchen is finished. At the wrap party, once I got over the beauty of the cabinetry, I was immediately taken by the new floor.

It’s a dynamic duo of antique southern heart pine on an engineered substrate, topped off by a tough-as-nails factory-applied finish. The pine forms the top wear layer, down to the tongue of the tongue-and-groove plank. In this way, it’s as “refinishable” as a solid pine floor, since one can only sand down to the tongue of any floor. Whether you’ll need to refinish it anytime soon is debatable, as today’s factory finishes with their aluminum oxide coatings are much tougher-wearing than any field-applied finish. Furthermore, the jobsite doesn’t need to come to a standstill for sanding and finishing—the floor is laid, and that’s that.

The substrate is “engineered” by virtue of its being plywood, whose cross-ply construction makes it very stable and less prone than solid wood to cupping and warping. It’s perfect for use over radiant heat.

And the look is just gorgeous. The wood comes from old logs that sank during long-ago drives, when wood was floated down river from the forests to the sawmills. This is old-growth wood, pulled up from the river bottom perfectly preserved and brought into service in a century it hadn’t been destined for.

Norm’s kitchen’s floor is 4 ¾” engineered reclaimed heart pine from the Trout River. New Yankee Workshop executive producer Russ Morash got it from:

J & T Associates
174 Cleveland St., Suite 1
Blairsville, GA 30512
Contact: Jason Bennet
912.437.3944 or 800.820.1150

Another source for engineered heart pine flooring is southernwoodfloors.com.

Two more notes. 1) Heart pine isn’t right for every home: a Queen Anne Victorian would rather have strip oak; a contemporary might look better with maple, ash or bamboo. 2) Some heart pine flooring is recycled from old buildings, some is recovered from river bottoms, and some is being grown now. The first two categories are a finite resource, so make your move sooner rather than later. One of these days, there won’t be any more.