Tom Campbell, owner of Old Wood Workshop in Pomfret is known all over the globe for his expertise in antique wood in general and vintage flooring in particular. In our last issue, we featured a story on how Old Wood Workshop rescued two architectural treasures from the 1735 Van Wyck House at Lloyd’s Harbor, New York. In this article, Tom goes into the details of how he chooses wood of the right quality and how he handles what he chooses with maximum care.

Old Wood Workshop Floors
info@oldwoodworkshop
860-655-5259.

   Some people looking for antique flooring are a little shocked at the price, but they don’t realize the effort and attention that goes into finding exceptional flooring…which is the only type I carry. When they understand its value and have it installed, they love the beauty and character it lends both restoration and new projects.
    Finding high quality, carefully salvaged antique flooring can be a challenge.  Most flooring that comes out of antique houses does not meet my standards for many reasons. For example, it’s painted (usually with lead paint), damaged from the weather (such as a leak in the ceiling) or poorly removed (causing new cracks). It can also be worn too thin (due to hundreds of year of foot traffic) or there are too many short boards vs. longer ones, and many other factors.  Sometimes it is high quality material, but just not wide enough.

   I look for attic floors (vs. first and second floor planks) because they usually come in larger quantities of similarly aged wood.  If the roof is good, it has helped preserve the floorboards from the elements.  Attics are usually one large room so walls don’t need to be demolished to get at the flooring.  Attic floors are rarely painted, and they haven’t had much foot traffic.
   When looking to purchase floors from the salvagers I deal with, I need to cull through the “batches” and look at every board.  Sometimes the top layer of boards look good, but as you go through the batch the overall quality doesn’t meet my standards.  I have made the mistake of driving 6 hours to look at flooring, bought it without going through it board by board, hauled it another 6 hours home only to find the majority of flooring in the bundle wasn’t very good quality.

   A batch of flooring is handled (each board picked up and moved) about 10 times from salvaging to delivering to buyer.  The flooring needs to be carefully removed with special tools by slowly prying from one end and working your way down to the other end without splitting the wood.  Then the boards are put onto sawhorses and de-nailed, carefully sent out a window and stacked onto a trailer.  Once they are driven home, they get unloaded and stacked and individually washed.  The wet boards are then leaned against the barn walls while the excess water drips off of them and then they are carried inside the barn and spread out (vertically) to air dry for a number of days.  The dry boards are then taken outside and stood against the barn wall again to get pictures and to measure them.  They are then brought back into the barn and stacked vertically until sold.  Once they are sold, they are again loaded onto a trailer, hauled to the buyer’s location and unloaded.  It is very labor intensive.

    Once the flooring goes through this process, it needs to be listed on my website to sell.  This involves selecting pictures to edit, providing measurements such as length and widths of boards, descriptions and pricing.  This gives the potential buyers all the information they need for making a purchase.  While most of my clients visit to see the flooring in person, some rely on just the website to make a decision.  Those who don’t visit are often too far away to do so, such as California or another country. 
When a floor sells, it is either delivered by me, or if too far away, a commercial shipper will be used. To me and my many satisfied customers, all the effort is worth it. Their home or office or restaurant features a little bit of history and a lot of beauty.