Hand Scraped Hard Wood Flooring – The Modern Trend

For the last three decades, the most popular material for the floor among house builders has been the very level, flat, high gloss, and smooth looking wood. In the initial days, it was difficult to achieve the perfection, but with the turn of the twentieth century, the engineered surface material started coming up for use. Achieving a nearly perfect smoothness became a reality. Naturally it has become a huge success.

However, as with other trends, the love for the hand scraped hard wood flooring is coming in vogue. To get a distinctive look, there is the need to replace a floor in an older home. In the case of historic buildings, it becomes all the more important to have the floor reflect the age. The presence of a rugged appearance would definitely be the choice over a shiny, glossy look. The same goes for getting a vintage style to a room.

The use of planks of wood as surface material dates back to the sixteenth century and by mid-nineteenth century, hand scraped hard wood flooring was still the method to even out the differences between planks. The technique involves using hand-held tools, and later on powered sanders, to tweak the natural human imperfections into deliberate styles. Craftsmen started to even out boards while deliberately marking and sculpting the wood. Hammer and chisel were used to give the boards a distinctive look.

Today’s surface has the design of a hand-made older-style floor that has a natural wear look, but with the modern finishes protecting the floor. The style has all the elements as denting, sanding or scooping of the wood to create little splits or holes (non-existent worms) and indentations. Often the final level of finish is left up to the customer to fulfill.

One advantage of this finish is to naturally hide any small blemishes that could come up in the future, a dent from a dropped object, a minor stepped upon nail, and things like that. This kind of product could be the right choice for a household where those eventualities are expected to be inevitable. The addition of modern finishes and stains have given these products the color or tone needed to complement any room. Also hand scraped hard wood flooring is not limited to natural products as one can find the style even in engineered products as well. This has opened up immense installation possibilities.

The imperfect leveling of the material means there is variance of the width of the floor. So all the way across the product, it is not going to be exactly ¾” of width, though this is largely irrelevant to your floor.