Beautiful Pine Floors, How Our Gorgeous New Floors Have Such Character
One of the most frequent questions I get from friends on social media are about our beautiful wood floors. Although our home is over 130 years old, our floors are only about three years old, however you’d never know it looking at them. How do they look so beautiful? Why do they appear to be as old as the house? That is because of the combined creativity of the designer and builder who renovated The Morrow House just a few years ago.
Our home was just a few weeks from being torn down by the city, and in the eyes of most people, was beyond repair. That didn’t discourage Amy Normand of The Normand Company (Dallas, Tx) and Chuck Walker of Crown Construction (Waco, TX) from resurrecting this gorgeous old home and restoring it to the beautiful home that it is today. Unfortunately, the original floors were just not salvageable, after years of neglect and exposure to the weather there was no way to preserve them. However, the charm of the home is its history so to install brand new flooring that looked it, was not an option.
Amy Normand decided that she wanted simple wide plank floors, and Chuck Walker had the genius idea to install them PRIOR to the restoration of the home and leave them untreated and unprotected during the project. The floors were purchased from the local wood supply and Crown construction laid a subfloor and then installed the pine planks. They were nailed down, but the nails are at an angle on the sides of each plank, so they are not visible. For the next several months everyone who did work on the house worked and walked on these raw pine plank floors. Things were dropped, hammered, and drug across the floors which gives them much of the character that they have today. Toward the end of the renovation, The Normand Co. and Crown Construction sealed the windows, cleared all of the dust out of the house and added a simple matte finish on them so that they could continue to grow old with the house. Amy says that she doesn’t recommend this for every home, but for this old beauty they were perfect. Normand believes every home has their own character and the floors should reflect that character, which is why they used this technique for The Morrow House.
I enjoy that the floors, like the rest of our home, are imperfect. It is somehow part of the charm that our walls aren’t perfectly symmetrical, our shiplap is a bit rough in spots and our floors have a rich and unique texture.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a style or brand to give to folks to duplicate the beauty of the floors, but the great news is that simple pine planks are a very inexpensive flooring option, so with this knowledge you may be able to recreate a bit of your own magic with your own floors.
