Lumber Loft: Acclimating Ash & Elm Flooring

For the last couple of weeks my future study/studio/office in the icehouse has been serving as a lumber loft. Remember my excitement when we completed installation of the beech flooring (surplus materials remaining from reflooring Rosslyn’s living room, parlor, kitchen, and entrance hallway) a couple months ago? And my anticipation when Tony was about to start sanding and sealing the beech?

Now that the loft flooring is installed, it’s time for sanding and sealing. I’ll post an update soon! (Source: Icehouse Loft Flooring Update – Rosslyn Redux)

Well, “soon” slipped into later. Tony sanded and sealed and sanded and sealed… Gradually he built up a luxurious luster that I should have showcased long ago. But the orphaned dispatch was preempted by another and then another. Time whistled past. And I’m still intending to revisit that process and the comely consequences. Soon!

And part and parcel of my current confessions is owning up to yet another inadvertent omission. There’s a drafted-but-delayed dispatch I initiated last autumn, updated intermittently this winter, but that today still remains unfinished and unpublished. Temporarily titled, “Homegrown Lumber: From Stump to Floor”, I am backstory-ing the ash and elm timber-turned-flooring that will soon ground Rosslyn icehouse’s first floor. Literally years in the works, this homegrown flooring is has been one of the guiding elements in the icehouse rehabilitation.

So the chronicle will be told. Not now. But as soon as I can tell the story succinctly and comprehensively. Hope it’ll be worth the wait. Until then, today’s sneak peek inside of the icehouse is a look at the lumber loft.

Lumber Loft, Haiku

Desk and bookshelves soon;
now stickered stacks of homegrown
floorboards, splines, drying.

The congruity between the patience and painstaking toil invested in these former-trees-future-floorboards and the poems and prose I cultivate from seed to harvest intrigues me. Especially so given my writing loft temporarily serving as a lumber loft…

Acclimating Ash & Elm Flooring

I will forestall the tempting tale of how these character rich floorboards have come so close to installation within felling distance of the coordinates which marked their birth, their maturation, and their yield. I will postpone the how and why this timber is hyperlocal, having never once been transported off-property. And instead I will touch briefly on the merits of the lumber loft for acclimating the homegrown, milled, and seasoned ash and elm that will soon and forever grace the icehouse’s first floor.

In the photograph above bundles of splines milled from the same ash and elm as the flooring rest atop the boards they will conjoin. In the previous images (perhaps the first eat of all) you can discern the grooves cut into the floorboards’ edges that will receive the splines. Mimicking the function of tongue-and-groove, our splined floorboard joinery will ensure stability while accommodating the inevitable movement arriving from changes in humidity and temperature. If our installation is successful, this hardwood floor will last at least as long as the already impressive tenure of this historic building. And to ensure a successful installation it’s vital to properly acclimate the material before it is fastened into place.

The icehouse’s loft — elevated and open to the interior of the building — provide ideal conditions for acclimating: warmth and air circulation. Stickering the wood (stacking the lumber with identically dimensioned perpendicular spacers between each course) ensures consistent airflow and temperature. Why is this important? Although the rough cut lumber was seasoned (dried) and stored in the carriage barn for over a decade prior to finish milling it into flooring, fluctuations in humidity and temperature shrink and expand the wood. They can even twist, bow, and warp the lumber. So acclimating the material in the space where it will subsequently be installed enables us to improve the likelihood of a stable and aesthetically pleasing floor.

In short? The lumber loft has proven to itself to be invaluable for quality control!