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The Beauty of Reclaimed Hardwood Flooring

21stCenturyHippy | May 19, 2010 |

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Reclaimed hardwood flooring is a beautiful thing in itself and a beautiful thing because it is good for the environment. For many years now demand has been growing for hardwood flooring in the developed world. And to meet this demand ancient hardwoods that have taken as long as 130 years to grow are being cut down. This is especially true of the Amazon Forest where loggers are going deeper and deeper into the forest to look for new supplies of rare hardwoods that will end up as expensive flooring for some rich person in America, Europe or Australia.

This is an intolerable situation. This desire for exotic hardwood flooring is robbing the young of their future. The only way to stop this trend is to vote with your bank book and refuse to buy new growth hardwood flooring.

Yet, hardwood flooring is attractive, long lasting, allergen free and very alluring. This is why it is so sought after as a flooring material. The alternative is reclaimed hardwood flooring or antique hardwood flooring.

Reclaimed hardwood flooring is flooring that has been made from abandoned, unused and lost pieces of hardwood timber. In the UK reclaimed hardwood timber often comes from condemned buildings such as hospitals and schools. In the States many pieces of hardwood timber are reclaimed from old barn doors and timber beams. There are a large number of places that hardwood can be found and reclaimed. From skips, from demolished houses, from park waste, from mine shafts, from old fencing, from landfill sites, even from the bottom of a lake or pond hardwood timber can be found. We don't need to chop down more trees to get hardwood flooring, we just need to recycle the hardwood we have already cut down and stopped using.

The process is simple to reclaim abandoned hardwood. It is simply taken to a kiln and heated until it is bone dry. Then it is sent to a mill to be turned into flooring planks. No need to expend energy, time and money sawing down new trees or bamboo, processing the 'wet' wood and then shipping it around the world. Instead, the city where you live probably has a plentiful supply of a variety of hardwoods ready for you to buy at competitive prices. Using reclaimed hardwoods for your flooring needs is the greenest thing you can do. It is recycling and it is locally sourcing. It helps the environment and it helps the local economy.

Reclaimed hardwood flooring is just as strong, dense and durable as new growth hardwood flooring. It is better than newly logged hardwood because it has had many years to stabilize as a wood so it is not going to 'move' after installation. What is more, reclaimed hardwood flooring has a smoother finish and an amazing patina created by years of use. This patina cannot be found with new hardwood flooring.

Consider the beauty of reclaimed hardwood flooring. The beauty it has as flooring material and the beauty it has a locally available and environmentally friendly resource. This beauty cannot be ignored.