A Hardwood Phoenix

Bill took two pieces of the mystery wood floor, one from the turn of the century quartersawn replacement floor in the would-be kitchen area (left) and one from the older, original floor areas (below), to Bailey's and had them planed down so that we could see what they were made of.

It turns out that the quartersawn stuff is oak, and really wide oak at that, while the older stuff is either virgin white pine or some type of fir.

Even though it's not chestnut like the timbers as we had once thought, it's still great, wide stuff that you can't find anywhere except maybe on the bottom of Lake Michigan.

The plan is now to do random 5", 6" and 8" width tongue and groove flooring throughout the barn, with the pine comprising the 1st floor and the oak as far as it goes on the loft. The old floors are about 2 in. thick, so we will be able to get two layers of 3/4" thick flooring out of each plank.

Oak on the left and pine on the right