Fir Vs Pine Flooring

Choosing a penetrating finish for fir floor.

Fir vs pine flooring.

Tight grained douglas fir boards from older trees are increasingly rare due to over harvesting and demand. Yes you can use pine subfloors as primary flooring. Uncovered pine subflooring appeals to recycling enthusiasts as well as fans of distressed wood. Heart pine is milled from the center of very large trees that are becoming scarce and hard to find.

Many people tend to confuse pine and douglas fir. The weight of wood varies by the species of wood and the moisture content of the lumber. Green lumber will weigh significantly more than kiln dried boards due to its higher density. In many older houses the pine subfloor was the only floor and it held up well.

Two groups of pine are used for the majority of pine flooring heart pine and standard pine varieties. One problem you may run into with both douglas fir and yellow pine is locating truly high quality lumber. Fir cypress cedar spruce and hemlock are other commonly available softwoods and you will find. The soft wood between the grain lines shrinks and expands making the wood cup or twist.

It can even cost less than luxury vinyl tile lvt which is often designed to mimic the look of wood. Pine is often half the price of hardwoods such as oak maple and mahogany. Pine is probably the softwood most frequently used in flooring but it s not the only one. The same can be said of older tougher yellow pine.

Another source of heart pine comes from reclaimed lumber such as beams or structural lumber. Fir has little soft grain. How to estimate how much wood weighs. I d like to finish the floors with something both to decrease wear and to make them easier to clean but i don t want to use any sort of top.

Our house was built in the 1920 s and our top story has raw fir t g floors with no sub floor. Sourcing douglas fir vs. While softwoods such as fir cedar and cypress are also lower in cost than most hardwoods they lack the combination of properties that makes pine so popular.