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what kind of wood is this?

7K views 31 replies 17 participants last post by  Leah Frances 
#1 ·
house is located in southern ontario Canada. it is around 100 yrs old. floors are original to the house. there are no knotts at all.

here is the BEFORE picture.. see how bad shape the floors are in?




AFTER 5 hours of sanding...




next i must rent the edger & apply stain.

question: what kind of wood is this?

i have compared the white wood with a piece of oak i had from HD. looks similar. the red coloured wood, what is this?
 
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#14 ·
looks like cherry/maple to me.... take a few close ups of some knotty/grained areas and we can tell better.
i think definitely 2 separate wood species though, as sanding would have removed most/all stain.
it also looks like that someone created that floor custom, as i see no butted edges in the planks.
you probably won't find 12'+ planks of flooring in bigbox stores... heh heh

DM
 
#15 · (Edited)
Another vote for cherry and maple. Look at the end of the seventh board from the right, just in front of the waste pipe. Is that a curly grain I see there?
I think I'd go a step beyond ordinary poly and protect that beautiful old craftsmanship with a gym floor finish.

Macros would really help, though. Can't zoom it enough to tell for sure without being too blurred.
 
#18 · (Edited)
wow, was not expecting such an out burst of enthusiasm. my wife is saying the same sort of things.. but the rest of our house has oak with dark walnut stain. so she prefers the floor a bit darker to go with the flow. she definately loves the floors though!

with this in mind, i went to HD and picked up some pre-tinted dark walnut wood filler and filled any of the old nail holes. see the dark smudge on the white piece of wood, right hand side. i will go over this with a piece of 100grit sand paper so only the nail hole is covered with the wood fill (waiting for it to dry).

here are some close up pictures:




and notice the swirl marks i left with my amateur edger technique... i plan on going over it with 100 grit orbital sander, hand held. i must make these floors look perfect..



 
#20 ·
Yoyizit , i only had one lose sample and it was old and ugly. i threw it in the garbage and replaced with a piece of oak i got from HD. this was back before i sanded the floors and realized what i had.

otherwise, the floor is solid, nothing lose. each piece is 1" thick, 3" wide and lays directly on the floor joist. it is tounge & gove.
 
#21 ·
WOW. WOW. WOW. If it weren't for my 8 to 16 inch wide heart of pine plank floors I would be dying of jealousy.

DH got me this book: What Wood is That? (Herbert Edlin). It came with good identification tools for wood and even has samples to compare.
 
#22 ·
ok.. my wife read this thread and may be swayed! she is now thinking to do a "natural stain" or no stain at all.. just poly.

but i already applied the walnut wood fill.. darn. so, i will go back and hole punch each hole to compress the dark wood fill INTO the wood. then i'll go over it with two different wood fills.. "natual" for the light strips and "mahogany" tinted for the red strips.

what are your suggestions on how to properly finish this floor? what products?

Knucklez
 
#25 ·
Yup pretty darn sure everyone is right....cherry and maple for sure. DO NOT STAIN! Staining my favorite hardwood-cherry is about as bad as spray painting a new benz with $4 cans from HD. In fact if this beautiful floor gets stained, I believe I have all lost my faith in carpentry and will drop out of the trade forever to work at a burger joint. Please sir...Please help keep me employed. I will chuckle the next time i install an osb subfloor and remember that floor in your home:)
Please post some updated pics once the floor is polyed
 
#26 ·
quick question... how do you properly apply poly (say that 3 times fast!).

i am using minmax gloss super fast trying professional poly. it says also on the can that NO SANDING is required (this is why we bought it).

last year on the pine plank 2nd floor of the house we put on poly in thin amounts with a brush. it caused micro-bubbles. but this was the instruction on the can.

then, later we went and did our oak living room floor with the same product. but decided to add more ample amounts per brush to get less bubbles (no idea how we came up with this theory). it worked, went on flawless.

in the kitchen this morning i applied same technique as living room, a lot of poly per brush stroke. and when it dried.. bubbles! ugg... this technique worked for the living room but not the kithen, no idea why. what am i doing wrong?

in the mean time, i will wait 36 hours for poly to dry and rent large square vibrating sander with 220 grit to lightly dust the floor. vacuum/tack it clean, and apply a THIN coat of poly.

Knucklez
 
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