Custom Handscraped Wood Floor

Posted by Aaron Schaalma

When you’re looking to buy something new, like a car or house,what's one thing you look for?  It's trying to find a car or house that's unique, that doesn't look like it was “made with a cookie cutter.” Well, the same thing goes for hardwood flooring. There are many different ways that a hardwood floor can be customized to make it a “one-of-a-kind” floor. One way is by using a method known as “hand scraping.” Hand scraping is an artistic way of making your floor stand out from all the others. The process of hand scraping a floor is very labor-intensive work, but the end result is “art” you can walk on. When we hand scrape a wood floor, whether it's a new floor or one that needs to be refinished, it still requires us to sand it like it’s going to be finished the normal way. The reason for this is that the floor needs to have a flat surface before we begin. imageOnce the sanding process has been completed, it's time to start hand scraping. Now, when I said it's a very labor-intensive process, I meant it! All the work is just like it sounds -- handscraping. There are a couple of different scrapers that can be used for this process. One scraper has a hook on the blade, which gives a deeper scrape to the floor. Another scraper, that has a smaller blade with no hook, can be used to give your floor the appearance of how it was done before there were sanders. On this job, we’ll be using the scraper with the hook blade. Now that we know which scraper we’ll be using, we need to make sure the blades are nice and sharp and that we have plenty to eat!Yes, I said eat! Hand scraping is quite a workout! So, now that we have all the food ready and blades sharp, we’re ready to start. We begin by starting against a wall and hand scraping the floor from one wall to the other side, making sure that we have the whole floor scraped. This process is repeated until the floor is completely hand scraped. There are a lot of wood scrapings from doing a floor, and by a lot, I mean a “mountain” of wood shavings! Once we’re done scraping the floor, we need to do a final sanding of the floor to smooth out any rough spots. This mayrequire some hand sanding, because of the irregularity from hand scraping. Now that the sanding is complete, it’s time to finish the floor. There are a couple of different finishes which can be applied to the wood floor-- normal film finish or penetrating oil, which is my favorite on hand scraped floors. On this particular floor, we used a ceramic fortified water- based finish. In order to make sure the floor has some texture from scraping, we used a different applicator to make sure the finish completely covered the floor. Now that the floor is complete, it has a great texture and feel from the hand scraping. Hand scraping is just one of the few artistic options that can be used to customize your floor. To find out how we can give your floor the unique look you desire, contact us today!image

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