Hi. I purchaed too much 18mm x 130mm t&g lacquered white oak flooring..So I have an unopened box containing 2.2sq metres. The flooring is a mix grades A and B. So mostly B and some grade A. However, in all of the 7 boxes I used there were some really beautifil lengths. I could get a refund...or...I could make some small items of furniture. Any of you guys done this before?
Thanks.
Arthur
Well, I've cut up leftover unfinished flooring certainly.
Don't know what you paid for it, but my thought on prefinished w/ that much unopened would be you can probably buy quite a lot of 1C or better white oak for the same or less money.
Since I'd think it hard to manage to build anything with it w/o harming the finish anyway plus having to try to match it, I'd probably take it back and use the $$ for something else.
--
If the box is unopened and the flooring wasn't special ordered the seller will usually that it back. It would be worth at least a call to the seller.
I got this flooring while it was on offer....like half price so if I get a refund it will be enough to buy perhaps 2 or 3 boards of 3/4" x 6" x 10ft. The advantage of using the flooring is I can pick out the best 7 or 8 lengths and just simply glue them together using the existing t & g edges. Then a couple of hours with a router and hey presto I've got an unusual coffee table top that I could sell for 4 or 5 times what I paid for those 8 boards. A bit like asset stripping :)
Arthur
Arthur 51 wrote: ...
... If that's so,
a) why come here and ask for opinions, and b) that would seem to contradict the difficulty most have in trying to make a worthwhile living in woodworking...
--
After we finished laying our floor we ended up with one carton of the finished flooring. Thought about getting a refund. Decided to keep it in case a "bad thing" happened to our floor. It is stored on a shelf in the basement. Yeah, I know replacing a board or two in the middle of the floor is difficult, but it is do-able.
BTW - The flooring had a 25 year warranty. Not so sure about the company that produced it. It was acquired by a local lumber chain who says they will stand behind warranty of the original supplier.
We'll see. Another reason to keep some backup pieces.
Ron
From original post I guess I was just asking around to see of anyone alse had had the same idea.
Discussion
----------- The exchange of ideas.
This idea is more likely to help a struggling artisan than undermine him/her. If it would take me a few hours to prduce a table that would look 'ok' a skilled man could produce something excellent in half the time. He could sell in small volume and make a steady sideline until a high paying job comes along.
Arthur
How much you make depends on your marketing and sales skills more than on your production skills. That skilled man who can produce something excellent in half the time may not have the marketing and sales ability to move his production at a price that gives him enough income to live on.
From a previous suggestion that you mentioned, can you exactly duplicate the finish for the rest of the project, if you use it for a table top? Otherwise it will probably look like a hodge podge of scraps.
While a good idea, consider that unless you keep the spare pieces in the same lighting the repair will end up being a lighter or darker shade. Still, probably better than patching with carpet or tile. ;~)
. The scraps is what sort gave me the idea. My new floor doesn't have uniformity of colour that you get with say...laminate. Its very figured with a good mixture of white and a few darker pieces, lighter pieces, etc. Remember, I said it was a mix of grades A and B. This made me think of a lot of the oak furniture I've seen in the downmarket and upmarket shops. They are ALL very same colour brown and if something that looks exactly like laminate it only becomes better when you mention that its made of real oak then it might as well be laminate I would be offering something entirely different that has a wide variation in colours, grain all over the place. But, nevertheless beautiful and definitely NEVER to be mistaken for laminate.
Question : Is an item of furniture made of oak beautiful simply because it made of oak and all of the pieces are colour matched?
Arthur
I've seen a couple tables along the lines of what you're talking about. Someone used leftover flooring for the top. The rest was some hardwood with an ebonized finish. The contract was striking and attractive. It looked very professional.
That presupposes one thinks oak is beautiful. That "golden oak" that you see in every kitchen from the 80-90's about turns my stomach. It's even worse on furniture, imo. Not a fan. It looks generic to me, and it's
*way* overused. Nothing says, "homogenized, furniture store, blech," like plain old golden oak.
You're going to end up with obvious lines between the boards unless you sand the existing finish off and level the boards. If that's the look you want then go for it.
Personally I have a bunch of prefinished birch left over. I'm thinking about making some small boxes and stuff, primarily for the shop. But I'm probably going to bandsaw the finish off and resaw it to 1/2" or thinner.
Chris
You may have missed my point. Typically a mish mash does not have the same finish "sheen". Think of touching up a flat brown colored wall with an exact match simi-gloss or gloss.
IMHO thw entire project should have the same sheen.
Your solid experience backs up my recently acquired half formed idea, perfectly. And encourages me to believe I'm not weird after all :)
Arthur
I've noticed there are many in here who are quick to "wax pessimistic" and love to argue for the sake of arguing.
In any case, I wish I could remember the specifics, but the place I saw the table I mentioned was some sort of showcase for recycled art... art made with recycled stuff or by re-using stuff.
The furniture I saw was very modern and lots of it, very simple. It took a very artful and nonconforming mind to come up with the stuff, but it was all beautiful. It was also clear to me that whoever built them had the skills and tools necessary to have done it all from raw materials, but chose to use pre-made stuff, like that leftover flooring.
One of the table tops had a rough texture to it with a v-groove on the linear seems, with no butt seems at all along the length, meaning it looked like four or five long pieces of solid wood, edge joined together. It was similar to this picture...
I doubt you have the brains to notice anything, and for Pete's sake what's the point in arguing just for the sake of it? Get your facts straight, will ya?
How's that? :-)
Yeah, I thought about that too. But I just can't get my wife to let me store an open carton of flooring in the living room.
Bull headed!
RonB
Pretty good, nimrod. :-)
(Your other sig file is getting some good mileage on my facebook page.)
Well if it can help save just one guy from the fallout of complaining when he's not happy, then by all means, keep using it. :-)
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.