Hand scraped wood is a popular rustic flooring material that takes the natural, luxurious beauty of solid hardwood and transforms it into something modern and unique. The wood planks of this flooring type have undergone the hand scraping process, where an artisan treats them with various tools to give them a worn, distressed appearance.
With its vibrant colors and versatile design, you can customize hand scraped wood flooring to accommodate any style, but it’s most suitable for rustic farmhouse homes. If you’re looking for solid or engineered hardwood floors for your rural home, explore the characteristics and benefits of durable, aesthetically pleasing hand scraped hardwood.
What Is Hand Scraped Hardwood Flooring?
Hand scraped hardwood is a popular flooring that involves distinct grooves and marks on a floor to provide warmth, personality and history for a room. For a fresh combination of traditional and modern, these newly cut wood planks will give your home the look of a preserved historic home.
Modern technology has given flooring manufacturing companies the ability to create engineered hand scraped hardwood. Traditionally, wood artisans would create hand scraped hardwood by:
- Using hammers, saw blades, chains, and chisels to put cracks in the planks, adding a rugged, aged look reminiscent of old barns or historic buildings.
- Adding texture to the floor with wire brushes. This technique not only enhances the natural grain of the wood but also gives the floor a weathered, yet sophisticated appearance.
- Hammering nuts and bolts to achieve a bullet-hole effect. This method can be particularly striking in rustic or industrial-style interiors.
- Pouring liquid metal into the dents and holes that they create. This adds a unique blend of old-world charm with a modern twist, making each plank truly one-of-a-kind.
- Using ice picks or drills to create a wormhole. These small, deliberate imperfections mimic the natural wear and tear seen in antique flooring.
- Creating a crystallized design on the floor with a broken beer bottle. This unconventional technique can result in a striking, artistic pattern that catches the eye.
- Highlighting the marks with resins, inks, acids, fillers, or dyes. These materials can accentuate the textures and bring out the character in each plank.
Manufacturers can hand scrape any wood species, but some take to the various scraping tools better than others. Softwoods, such as oak, pine and walnut, can withstand the hand-scraping process, while teak and maple are hardwoods. If you use wood that’s challenging to scrape, the result isn’t always aesthetically pleasing.
As you choose a wood species to create your hand-scraped hardwood flooring, think about your home’s color scheme and the durability you need for the floors in your room. You could also get engineered wood, which contains multiple fibers of wood to create a single plank.
To make the process easier, consider consulting with a flooring specialist. They can help you:
- Browse different wood species and finishes.
- Design a layout that complements your home’s aesthetics.
- Select the right type of wood based on your lifestyle and needs.
- Plan the installation to ensure it fits seamlessly into your renovation schedule.
Talking to an expert ensures you get personalized guidance tailored to your specific requirements, making it easier to bring your vision to life.
Additional Techniques for Authentic Aging
- Hit or Miss Technique: Adds saw swirls and patterns that are commonly seen on boards cut at early sawmills, giving your floor a historic sawmill finish.
- Footworn Technique: Reproduces the subtle erosion where softer grains wear away more quickly than harder grains, creating an undulating pattern in the wood that mimics years of foot traffic.
- Timeworn Technique: Recreates the worn appearance of boards that have been lived on for generations, providing a timeless, lived-in look.
- Brushed Techniques: Use special brushes to “un-smooth” a solid hardwood floor, giving the boards more of a worn texture that feels wonderfully tactile underfoot.
By combining these methods, you can create a floor that not only looks aged and full of character but also fits seamlessly into any design aesthetic, from rustic to contemporary. Each technique offers its own unique touch, ensuring that your hardwood floor is a true reflection of your personal style and historical appreciation.
Benefits of Hand Scraped Wood Flooring
Think about installing hand scraped wood flooring in your living space because it offers the following benefits.
1. Beautiful and Unique Appearance
Traditional hand scraped wood is famous for its innate beauty, displaying the natural features of the wood and accommodating a rustic design aesthetic. While most hardwood flooring has a clean, even appearance, hand scraped wood has a unique, dimensional look that you can use to design your modern farmhouse kitchen, living room or dining room. Its patterns and colors can also be customized to complement your furniture and style preferences.
The following characteristics of hand scraped wood are what make it unique:
- Rough texture: While solid hardwood flooring typically has a smooth look and feel, hand scraped hardwood has divots and grooves from the hand scraping process that results in a rough, three-dimensional texture.
- Varying colors: To enhance the look of natural wood in solid hardwood flooring, manufacturers and artisans use the various vibrant colors that you would see in a plank of wood throughout the flooring material. Since each plank of hand scraped wood has a unique pattern and color, laying these planks on your floor results in a room with a distinct personality.
- Customizable size: Hand scraped wood is available in a variety of width and length options for each plank. Wide planks can enhance the aesthetic of a rustic farmhouse, while thin wood offers a more refined, elegant appearance.
2. Durable
While solid hardwood floors can last for several decades, hand scraped hardwood can have a longer lifespan. If you have pets or areas in the house that many people use, you can have peace of mind when liquid spills or an object drops on the floor. Hand scraped wood flooring is resistant to:
- Wear and tear: Clean hardwood floors look old and worn out over time because of dents and impressions in the panels. New hand scraped wood has uneven edges, so any blemishes to the wood look like part of its original design.
- Rotting and discoloration: Engineered hardwood contains a mixture of natural wood with fibers from various wood species to increase its resistance to rotting from water and insects. It also won’t fade or experience discoloration because of its interaction with direct sunlight.
- Scratches: If you have solid hardwood in your home, you need to refinish it every couple of years to ensure it maintains its integrity. Engineered hand scraped wood typically features a highly durable finish that can last for several decades.
Make your wood floors last even longer by using furniture pads and laying area rugs on them to help prevent accidental damage. You can also create engineered hand scraped hardwood with unique features according to your specific needs. For example, if you want to put hardwood flooring in the bathroom, you could use waterproof or water-resistant wood.
3. Easy to Clean and Maintain
This aesthetically pleasing, long-lasting flooring is also easy to clean, maintaining its beauty and integrity for years to come with little effort. Due to its distressed look, any dents or impressions will only enhance its beauty, but you should take care of it to prolong its lifespan. To clean hand scraped hardwood flooring:
- Pick up dust: Use a dust mop with a microfiber head at least once a week to clean the dirt and debris off your floors.
- Deep clean: Every few months, use a wet mop with a mild detergent to get rid of stains and stubborn debris.
- Wipe up spills immediately: If you spill liquid onto your floors, clean it right away to prevent moisture from seeping in between the planks and on the surface.
- Avoid using shoes: Debris from the outside can get stuck in shoes and track through your house. Ask your family and guests to take off their shoes when they come into the house to keep your wooden floors clean. You could also put doormats at the entrance of your home.
*Always check your flooring warranties before using cleaning products.
Schedule an Appointment With 50Floor
If you’re interested in hand scraped wood flooring for your home, one of our professionals at 50Floor will provide a free in-house estimate, where they’ll bring samples of our materials to you. This convenient way to shop allows you to have valuable advice from a flooring professional in the comfort of your own living space. You can hold up a piece against your furniture, walls and decor to see how it will look in your room.
Contact us online today to schedule a free in-house estimate from an expert at 50Floor who works at any of our service areas. If you have any questions about buying hardwood flooring, call us at 1-800-50-FLOOR.
