Cherry and Ash Flooring

With all of the messy stonework, blockwork, and stucco work complete on the inside of the house, we've decided to start putting down more hardwood flooring. This first picture is of the cherry floor we put down in the loft. We bought this flooring, unfinished, from the warehouse for $1/square foot. It already had microbevels premilled on the edges, so it was destined to be sold as prefinished flooring, but was culled in the manufacturing process for some reason. Because of the pre-exisitng microbevels, my wife sanded and put 3 to 4 coats of polyurethane on each piece (using a brush... an arduous process!) before we nailed it to the floor. We had exactly enough 3" and 5" wide pieces to cover the loft above the kitchen. It was a lot of work, but it looks fabulous in real life. We've dared the kids to walk on it with muddy shoes. ;)

In the great room, we're putting down ash flooring, bought for the same price from the same factory. It has no bevels, so we will sand and finish it after it is on the floor. I bought all of the ash the factory had to offer at the time. Most of it is 2.25" wide and sorted in three types of bundles labeled "qtr and rift," "select and btr," and "no. 1 common." We broke all of the packages apart and we were able to harvest rift and quartered boards from the other two piles in order to have just enough to do our entire great room in rift and quartered ash. The other, i.e. flatsawn, ash boards will be used in the dining room and in our bedroom. Rift and quartersawn ash looks much like rift and quartersawn oak, but with more contrast, a lighter color, and no ray flecking. To my wife and I, it looks just like "fruit stripe gum" if only we were to stain it in the colors of the rainbow.