Reclaimed pine boards - not happy with supplier :(

[moeman79]

Hi everyone. Sorry that this is my first post.

Basically I bought 100sqm of reclaimed pine flooring from a sawmill/flooring specialist. The timber is in excess of 100 years old and has been cut from large joists down to 8.5" wide floor boards.

When they arrived there were a load of holes the size of a 50p piece in a lot of the boards which presumably is from pipe work being in the original joists. I can understand why they are there but I can't believe that anyone would send out a load of floor boards that look like swiss cheese. I would say approximately 40% of the boards have at least one hole and a few have multiple.

I spoke to the supplier today who said that it is what is expected of reclaimed boards and that normal practice is to cut plugs out of the offcuts to fill the holes and that once laid, sanded and oiled/varnished/waxed they wouldn't be a problem.

I'm not impressed. Can anyone with first hand knowledge confirm whether this is acceptable and common practice?

Any help is much appreciated.

Mo

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I've installed recycled timber flooring like that in posh restaurants/bars and it is, indeed, common practice to plug "too obvious" defects using offcuts, etc. Because of pipe holes, splits, delamination, etc wastage in this sort of material can be pretty high, sometimes as high as 30% (of the whole board, not defects in 30% of boards as a whole), and the price you've paid should reflect this. At the end of the day architects and designers often pay a lot of money for "character" - although as the mug who installs it I sometimes wonder why. Maybe if you could lay out a few boards and post some pictures someone would be able to make a more critical assessment

 

[moeman79]

Thanks for the feedback. Has anyone else found the same thing?