Reclaimed Pine Wood Flooring

Hi friend!

I am SO SO excited to share a big decision we made for the farmhouse! We’re going to install reclaimed pine wood flooring throughout the main level!! This has been a dream of mine since we moved in and discovered we wouldn’t be able to refinish the existing original wood floors. I’ll explain how we arrived at this decision and more about this gorgeous flooring below!

*This post contains affiliate links.  If you click on these links and purchase something, I make a commission at no additional cost to you.  This helps to support my blog, so thank you SO much!*

top section of flooring sample is without stain

Deciding on Reclaimed Flooring

As I mentioned above we were disappointed to realize we wouldn’t be able to refinish the original wood floors on the main level of the house. Why couldn’t we? A few reasons. The original wood flooring on the main level doesn’t have any subfloor underneath. This is typical of older homes. One route we could have gone was to pull up the flooring, add plywood, and then re-install the flooring over the top. This way there would be more than one layer between us and the basement.

However, this option isn’t viable for a couple reasons. The main level of the house was essentially divided into 4 rooms; a kitchen, dining room, sitting room, and screened in porch. Later a bathroom and mudroom were added.  The kitchen floors were in the best shape, but still had some big sections that had been replaced with plywood. The dining room and sitting room have asbestos tile glued down over the top of them. Which isn’t something I’m messing with. Finally, the screened in porch is the room that was completely enclosed by the previous owner. If it ever had original flooring in it they’re long gone and have been replaced with plywood.

And that’s the sad story of why we can’t refinish the original wood floors on the main level. Ha!

it matches our upstairs flooring perfectly

Reclaimed Flooring

Fortunately, this wasn’t the case upstairs! I was able to refinish all of the upstair original pine wood floors and couldn’t be happier with how they turned out!

You can see how I refinished them HERE!

Of course after seeing them refinished I was even more sad we wouldn’t be able to have them on the main floor. Before our kitchen remodel (part 1 ;)) I spent a good amount of time searching for reclaimed wood flooring, but it never seemed like something that would work. Sometimes I would come across enough reclaimed pine to do a room or 2, but then I worried I wouldn’t be able to find the same wood to match it for the rest. And then sometimes I would find enough for the whole main level but it would be way out of my budget. You have to remember we are fixing this place up ourselves on an as we can afford it budget and that comes with it’s challenges but I still wouldn’t change it!

flooring in the upstairs guest bedroom

Making the Best of Our Budget

Eventually I gave up on my search and leaned into trying to create a flooring that was as close to the upstairs as possible. Enter our kitchen floors, which you can read about in further detail HERE! I decided to install pine planked floors throughout the main floor. We put them in the kitchen first and I stained them and also painted a pattern on them. They’re beautiful in their own way for sure, but I was immediately disappointed in the busyness and rustic feel that the knots create. I think if I had chosen a select pine it would have been different, but because of lumber prices that option wasn’t in my budget.

So after living with them for awhile I had decided I would paint the stained portion of the kitchen floors a charcoal color, and then paint the pine planked floors throughout the rest of the house as we installed them. The upstairs would be warm toned flooring and the downstairs painted. I was content with this…until I met Barry 😉

Architectural Salvage

We met our friend and local architectural salvage dealer Barry through a Facebook marketplace purchase of our greenhouse doors, almost a year ago. Meeting him has completely changed the trajectory of this house’s renovation! We’ve been able to source wood for window moldings, transom windows and hardware, the beadboard and door for the bedroom I built upstairs, that big beautiful cabinet that will be going in our kitchen, the list goes on. Well he and I were discussing the next room I would be working on, the dining room. I placed an order for reclaimed beadboard for wainscoting, and the conversation made its way to flooring.

I had talked flooring with him a few times before, and he knew my dilemma. This time he mentioned he had would have the exact same pine wood flooring as our upstairs coming into stock soon, and I got all the butterflies! Since we’ve already been a steady client, who still has a long way to go and will be sourcing almost everything from him, we worked out a deal! I gave a deposit for the entire main level of flooring and will pay on it as I go! This is an absolute dream come true! We will have the floors we truly wanted and that the house deserves!

I also want to talk prices because it may surprise you to know that with the current costs of lumber the reclaimed floors are actually LESS expensive than buying number 2 pine lumber as flooring!

flooring sample in front of our original exterior door

sample on top of kitchen floors

Out with the New in with the Old

Thankfully we only installed new flooring in the kitchen. Since we haven’t gotten to the cabinetry yet, they shouldn’t be too difficult to rip out. Yes we ripping them out, calm down lol! I didn’t take that decision lightly, as I’m sure you can imagine since I’m the one who bought and installed them 😉 However, I know it’s the right decision and it will be worth it! With all the projects we have planned we’ll either be able to reuse them. Or we can always sell them too. But the first room the new reclaimed flooring will be going into is the dining room!

Reclaimed Pine Wood Flooring

This is honestly maybe the most exciting thing to have happened on our farmhouse renovation/restoration journey so far. I cannot wait to see those gorgeous floors in the dining room, pictured above. I’ve never installed reclaimed flooring so that will be something new I get to learn too! I’ve already started the demo of the dining room. I’ll be sharing how it’s going here soon and you can keep up with the progress everyday @midcounty_journal on Instagram. Let me know if you have any questions about the flooring or anything else!

Thanks so much for stopping by the blog today!

You can see how I refinished our upstairs wood floors HERE!

Check out our farmhouse bedroom HERE!

All the information about the guest bedroom renovation is linked HERE!

Details on our kitchen renovation to date found HERE!

DIY kitchen open shelving details linked HERE!

See the big beautiful cabinet we’ll be installing in our kitchen HERE!