Chestnut baseboard trim (C) Daniel Friedman

Guide to Kinds of Wood Flooring Materials

How to identify different types & ages of wood floors
List and photographs of Types & Ages of Wood Floors Used in buildings
Examples of restoration of old & antique wood strip floors & wood parquet floors
Warnings to Wood Floor Restorers - mistakes to avoid,
Wood Inlay & Parquet Flooring
Modern Narrow-Width Solid Wood Strip Flooring
Modern Thin Width Short Length Wood Strip Flooring
Pre-Finished Wood Flooring Materials
Questions & Answers about how to identify different types of wood floors & flooring materials & how they may indicate the age of a building
References

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Types of wood flooring: A photo guide to all types and ages of wood flooring 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 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. 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.

List of Types & Ages of Wood Floors Used in buildings

Also see FLOOR TYPES & DEFECTS. If examining resilient flooring that may contain asbestos, also see FLOOR TILE HISTORY & INGREDIENTS and ASBESTOS FLOOR TILE IDENTIFICATION.

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 [DF]. These soft pine 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.

Wideboard wood floor ca 1860 (C) Daniel Friedman

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.

Watch out: do not fill gaps between shiplap cut or tongue-and groove cut wood floor boards. 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

Parquet floor with inlay (C) Daniel Friedman

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 by the author, loose pieces were cleaned, and the repaired sections were re-glued to a backer and replaced in the floor. The result was a salvaged "too thin to sand" but beautiful 1900 parquet 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 pine flooring in a 1920 home restored by the author in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Modern Thin Width Short Length Wood Strip Flooring

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

Our photo of a non-vee type pre-finished oak short-strip full 3/4" thick flooring (below-left) was installed in a home constructed in 1998 shows a floor that can be sanded and re-finished if needed.

Pre-Finished Wood Flooring Materials, Wide Width Hickory

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).

Our pre-finished floor installed at left was installed in 2010, used 5-inch wide pre-finished hickory hardwood floor materials.

Hickory is among the hardest of wood floor materials, and is very resistant to damage from rolling desk chairs and furniture or use.

The lovely wood grain pattern shown is the result of work by the authors to pre-sort and arrange individual floor boards before the installers nailed them in place. Alternatively, installers simply nail the boards in a random pattern that can also be attractive to some.

Photo courtesy of Eric Galow, Galow Homes.

Watch out: V-grooved pre-finished floors cannot be easily sanded and re-finished.

In a traditional un-finished wood strip floor installation job any irregularities would vanish during finish sanding and finishing of the floor before the coats of stain (optional) and clear top coating are applied.

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.

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Technical Reviewers & References

Related Topics, found near the top of this page suggest articles closely related to this one.

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?
"
Eric Galow, Galow Homes, Lagrangeville, NY. Mr. Galow can be reached by email: ericgalow@gmail.com or by telephone: 914-474-6613. Mr. Galow specializes in residential construction including both new homes and repairs, renovations, and additions.
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.

Books & Articles on Building & Environmental Inspection, Testing, Diagnosis, & Repair

Our recommended books about building & mechanical systems design, inspection, problem diagnosis, and repair, and about indoor environment and IAQ testing, diagnosis, and cleanup are at the InspectAPedia Bookstore. Also see our Book Reviews - InspectAPedia.

The Home Reference Book - the Encyclopedia of Homes, Carson Dunlop & Associates, Toronto, Ontario, 25th Ed., 2012, is a bound volume of more than 450 illustrated pages that assist home inspectors and home owners in the inspection and detection of problems on buildings. The text is intended as a reference guide to help building owners operate and maintain their home effectively. Field inspection worksheets are included at the back of the volume. Special Offer: For a 10% discount on any number of copies of the Home Reference Book purchased as a single order. Enter INSPECTAHRB in the order payment page "Promo/Redemption" space. InspectAPedia.com editor Daniel Friedman is a contributing author.

Or choose the The Home Reference eBook for PCs, Macs, Kindle, iPad, iPhone, or Android Smart Phones. Special Offer: For a 5% discount on any number of copies of the Home Reference eBook purchased as a single order. Enter INSPECTAEHRB in the order payment page "Promo/Redemption" space.

Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction, by Steven Bliss. John Wiley & Sons, 2006. ISBN-10: 0471648361, ISBN-13: 978-0471648369, Hardcover: 320 pages, available from Amazon.com and also Wiley.com. See our book review of this publication.
Decks and Porches, the JLC Guide to, Best Practices for Outdoor Spaces, Steve Bliss (Editor), The Journal of Light Construction, Williston VT, 2010 ISBN 10: 1-928580-42-4, ISBN 13: 978-1-928580-42-3, available from Amazon.com
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
Falls and Related Injuries: Slips, Trips, Missteps, and Their Consequences, Lawyers & Judges Publishing, (June 2002), ISBN-10: 0913875430 ISBN-13: 978-0913875438
"Falls in the home and public places are the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths in the United States, but are overlooked in most literature. This book is unique in that it is entirely devoted to falls. Of use to primary care physicians, nurses, insurance adjusters, architects, writers of building codes, attorneys, or anyone who cares for the elderly, this book will tell you how, why, and when people will likely fall, what most likely will be injured, and how such injuries come about. "
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.
What Style Is It?: A Guide to American Architecture, Rev., John C. Poppeliers, S. Allen Chambers, Wiley; Rev Sub edition (October 6, 2003), ISBN-10: 0471250368, ISBN-13: 978-0471250364
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