Guide to Kinds of Wood Flooring Materials InspectAPedia® -
How to identify different types & ages of wood floors
Building component age: construction materials, methods, including hardware, saw cuts, and other details can help determine when a building was constructed or when it was modified.
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Here we provide a photo guide to types and ages of wood flooring in buildings. The age of a building can be determined quite accurately by documentation, but when documents are not readily
available, visual clues such as those available during a professional home inspection can still determine when a house was built. Also see FLOORING TYPES & DEFECTS.
List of Types & Ages of Wood Floors Used in Buildings
The list of flooring types by wood species, widths, thicknesses, edge types (square, shiplap, tongue & groove), and the history and age of the use of these products in buildings is enormous. Here we collect and provide photographs of a collection of wood flooring types as an aid to flooring restorers, preservationists, and inspectors wishing to determine the age of a building and its materials.
Warnings to Wood Floor Restorers
The properties of wood as well as its coatings change over time. Wideboard shiplap-edged floors in an 1860's house we restored in Wappingers Falls NY had been coated with a paint made of oxblood and milk. 125 years later this coating was difficult to remove. Not wanting to use modern floor sanders to make the floors in this historic home dead flat, we tried sanding with portable sanders and found ourselves replacing the sanding belt or disc ever few minutes. Water or other chemicals did not help. We resorted to hand scraping and sanding.
Our antique wide board flooring photos (below) show before and after photographs of the wide board flooring repaired and restored by the author. These boards were edged in a ship-lap or "L" cut design in which about 50% of the each board edge is rabbeted or cut away. Older solid wood boards typically used before 1800 in the Northeastern U.S. often were made of solid 1" thick boards with squared and butted edges. At Wood Floor Damage we discuss causes and proper treatment of gaps between wood floor boards.
Wood also may become very hard with age. This example about chestnut trim applies to salvaging old wood flooring as well. Removing old trim may require the simultaneous use of multiple thin prybars to avoid ruining the material.
Nails should be removed from the back of the trim, not the front, by pulling the nail through the wood board. If you try to hammer nails back out from the back to the front or exposed face of the board the nail head will usually split and damage the face of the trim board.
We removed chestnut trim boards in this 1900 home (photo at left) in Poughkeepsie, NY to route new electrical wiring in the lower walls. It was impossible to nail these beautiful boards back in place - it was like nailing iron. Every nail hole had to be drilled to avoid damaging the wood. The flooring shown here is a combination of 1900's vintage strip flooring and inlay.
Wood Inlay & Parquet Flooring
Continuing with another photo of the Poughkeepsie home built ca 1900, the parquet flooring was surrounded by wood inlay border.
Unfortunately this floor had been sanded several times, resulting in parquet and trim so thin that only the most gentle, non-desctructive re-finishing was feasible.
Where parquet sections had come loose a previous owner had secured them with many tiny wire nails. These were removed, loose pieces cleaned, and the repaired sections were re-glued to a backer and replaced in the floor.
Modern Narrow-Width Solid Wood Strip Flooring
Widespread popular use of thin-width 3/4" thick wood strip flooring began in the U.S. in the 1920's and continued to the 1980's.
Look closely at the edge of the floor, perhaps pulling up quarter-round or baseboard floor trim to expose the very perimeter of the floor, and you may be able to determine how much thickness of the wood has been lost from prior re-sanding and re-finishing.
Our photo, left, shows original 1920's pine flooring in a restored home in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Modern Thin Width Short Length Wood StripFlooring
Widespread popular use of shorter-length thin-width 3/4" thick wood strip flooring began in the U.S. in the 1980's as the price of solid wood flooring and wood in general increased rapidly. Often sold in composite sections (multiple lengths or even widths pre-glued together, and usually pre-finished (see below) this flooring material can be as beautiful as its older longer-length sister. Carefully chosen and matched thin-strip, wood short length
Pre-Finished Wood Flooring Materials
Pre-finished wood flooring can significantly reduce the installation cost for wood floors in a home. Because such floors may be installed by inexpert builders, perhaps over an uneven subfloor without an underlayment, some pre-finished wood flooring is beveled along the board edges, providing a "Vee-groove" shown between abutting floor boards. The Vee will disguise slight irregularities in the floor installation (common) and slight variations in thickness between abutting boards (uncommon).
In a traditional wood strip floor these irregularities would vanish during finish sanding and finishing of the floor. But keep in mind that a V-groove pre-finished wood floor cannot be sanded for re-finishing without causing a cosmetic problem: unless the floor is sanded so deeply as to remove the "V" grooves completely, the grooves will be inconsistent across the re-finished floor, a troubling cosmetic defect to many owners.
Our photo of a non-vee type pre-finished oak short-strip full 3/4" thick flooring used in a home constructed in 1998 shows a floor that can be sanded and re-finished if needed.
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America's Favorite Homes, mail-order catalogues as a guide to popular early 20th-century houses, Robert Schweitzer, Michael W.R. Davis, 1990, Wayne State University Press ISBN 0814320066 (may be available from Wayne State University Press)
American Plywood Association, APA, "Portland Manufacturing Company, No. 1, a series of monographs on the history of plywood manufacturing",Plywood Pioneers Association, 31 March, 1967, www.apawood.org
Asbestos products and their history and use in various building materials such as asphalt and vinyl flooring includes discussion which draws on Asbestos, Its Industrial Applications, D.V. Rosato, engineering consultant, Newton, MA, Reinhold Publishing, 1959 Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 59-12535 (out of print).
Building Research Council, BRC, nee Small Homes Council, SHC, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, brc.arch.uiuc.edu. "The Small Homes Council (our original name) was organized in 1944 during the war at the request of the President of the University of Illinois to consider the role of the university in meeting the demand for housing in the United States. Soldiers would be coming home after the war and would be needing good low-cost housing. ... In 1993, the Council became part of the School of Architecture, and since then has been known as the School of Architecture-Building Research Council. ... The Council's researchers answered many critical questions that would affect the quality of the nation's housing stock.
How could homes be designed and built more efficiently?
What kinds of construction and production techniques worked well and which did not?
How did people use different kinds of spaces in their homes?
What roles did community planning, zoning, and interior design play in how neighborhoods worked?
"
Isham: "An Example of Colonial Paneling", Norman Morrison Isham, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 5 (May, 1911), pp. 112-116, available by JSTOR.
Manufactured & Modular Homes: Modular Building Systems Association, MBSA, modularhousing.com, is a trade association promoting and providing links to contact modular builders in North America. Also see the Manufactured Home Owners Association, MHOAA, at www.mhoaa.us. The Manufactured Home Owners Association of America is a National Organization dedicated to the protection of the rights of all people living in Manufactured Housing in the United States.
Pergo AB, division of Perstorp AB, is a Swedish manufacturer or modern laminate flooring products. Information about the U.S. company can be found at http://www.pergo.com where we obtained historical data used in our discussion of the age of flooring materials in buildings.
Plank House Construction: webslog from plankhouse.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/plank-house-construction/ and where plank houses were built by native Americans, see
Large 1:6 Scale Plank House Construction / P8094228,
Photographer: Mike Meuser
06/12/2007 documented at yurokplankhouse.com where scale model Museum quality Yurok Plank Houses are being sold to raise money for the Blue Creek - Ah Pah Traditional Yurok Village project.
List of Online Articles Giving Detailed Information & Reference Materials for Determining the Age of Buildings
Square D Circuit Breaker Recalls, announced by the US CPSC, recalls include a Square D GFCI circuit breaker distributed by Square D, and a Counterfeit Square-D circuit breaker sold through Scott Electric
Flooring Materials: history of types and age of different flooring materials: Asphalt or vinyl-asbestos floor tiles, sheet flooring, linoleum, ceramic tile, carpeting, wood floor types and materials
Foundation Crack Bible, in-depth diagnosis, and evaluation of all types of structural and non-structural cracks in residential foundations [Brick, Concrete, Masonry Block, Stone]
Tremont Nail Company offers steel cut nails for authentic restoration projects and work on historic building
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