Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette The Russian white oak floor in the home of Carole Kamin of Shadyside is from St. Petersburg, Russia. Click photo for larger image. Sources: Aged Woods www.agedwoods.com; 1-800-233-9307 Appalachian Woods Antique Flooring www.appalachianwoods.com; 1-800-333-7610 Carlisle Wide Plank Floors www.wideplankflooring.com; 1-800-595-9663 Conklin's Authentic Antique Barnwood www.conklinsbarnwood.com; 1-570-465-3832 Goodwin Heart Pine Co. www.HeartPine.com; 1-800-336-3118 Hardwood Information Center www.hardwood.org; 1-800-373-9663 Heartwood Pine Floors www.heartwoodpine.com; 1-800-524-7463 Mountain Lumber Co. www.mountainlumber.com; 1-800-445-2671 Pennsylvania Lumber Connection www.pennsylvanialumberconnection.com; 1-610-656-0990 Pioneer Millworks www.pioneermillworks.com; 1-800-951-9663 Reclaimed Wood Council www.reclaimedwoodcouncil.org Resource Recovery www.heartpine.org; 1-866-653-4769 Sylvan Brandt Antique and Resawn Flooring www.sylvanbrandt.com; 1-717-626-4520 Timeless Timber www.timelesstimber.com; 1-888-653-5647 Vintage Lumber Co. www.vintagelumber.com; 1-800-499-7859 What Its Worth Inc. Antique Lumber and Flooring www.wiwpine.com; 1-512-328-8837

To Carole and Dan Kamin, run-of-the-mill flooring just wouldn't do.

The recently remodeled kitchen in their 1885 Colonial Revival in Shadyside boasts geode-like cork plank floors in varying shades of marigold, while the basement pool room wears wheat-colored wall-to-wall seagrass carpeting.

The couple's most stunning choice, however, can be found in a cheerful garden room that overlooks the couple's fabulously landscaped backyard. The Russian oak floors were milled from 400- to 500-year-old wood that was supposed to be used to build railroad cars but instead ended up in a warehouse in St. Petersburg for more than 60 years.

"We really wanted a natural, organic look," says Carole.

Distinguished by the occasional knot and smoothed to a natural finish, these resplendent, honey-colored antique floor boards -- which vary in width from about 2 to 8 inches -- are the room's showpiece. And that's saying a lot when you consider that this unique room also has an octagonal ceiling cove, a full-sized brass tiger, antique ship lanterns, a pair of giant antlers from Burma and an immense early 20th-century Spanish bistro mirror the couple found in New York City.

"It's all part of the visual feast," says Carole, who found an ad for the floor's supplier, Virginia-based Mountain Lumber, in an old-house magazine. The cost for 650 square feet was about $5,000, not including installation.

While reclaimed wood flooring accounts for just a small part of the hardwood flooring industry, a growing number of people are following in the Kamins' footsteps, outfitting their homes with wood recovered from 100-year-old factories, barns, textiles mills, bridges, even old cider mills, wineries, breweries and distilleries. Mountain Lumber, for example, also offers English brown oak flooring reclaimed from Guinness ale vats in Dublin, Ireland.

Thanks to its strength and durability, longleaf Southern yellow pine, which is often referred to as "heart pine," is among the most popular reclaimed woods, along with antique oak, chestnut, hemlock and cypress.

Some homeowners and builders, no doubt, are enticed by the ecological benefits of recycled woods. The vast virgin forests that once blanketed the United States have been timbered almost to extinction. Less than 10,000 acres of old-growth heart pine remains today. Buying old wood means less of those trees will be cut down.

Conklin's Authentic Antique Barnwood Old woods can be used in various ways. Here, the grid between the floor tiles is made from antique chestnut flooring, the ceiling beams are from barnwood backs, and the stair treads from 2-inch thick barn floor planks. Click photo for larger image.

Vintage flooring also provides homeowners a distinctive sense of history and place. Depending on the species you choose, the wood could have been gleaned from a Civil War-era cotton mill in the Deep South or from molds used to make sections of a bridge in New York City. Or perhaps, as in the case of Mountain Lumber's ancient Chinese elm, which features chocolate-colored grain swirls through a rich butterscotch heartwood, it came from a 400-year-old temple in China.

"Every floor has a story to tell, a history, which we research and then offer to our clients," says company owner Willie Drake.

Looking for old floors with an even cooler back story? Timeless Timber of Wisconsin and Goodwin Heart Pine Co. and Resource Recovery, both of Florida, are a few of the companies that specialize in old-growth virgin heart pine and cypress recovered from the bottoms of rivers and lakes. Much of the wood used in building cities in the 1800s was tied on river rafts and floated downstream to logging mills scattered along the shorelines of lakes and rivers. Any "sinkers" that fell off remained perfectly preserved in the cold water.

But mostly, it's about aesthetics. New floors might shine, but antique floors positively glow with an old-time warmth that can't be replicated.

"The aging and patina are absolutely gorgeous," says Sandra Conklin, owner of Conklin's Authentic Antique Barnwood & Hand Hewn Beams in Susquehanna, Susquehanna County, which offers several types of flooring in antique white pine, chestnut, hemlock, oak and heart pine.

"It's spectacularly beautiful wood," agrees Larry Green, owner of Heartwood Pine Floors, a North Carolina company that specializes in antique heart pine. Nail holes and stress cracks, he says, only add to the character.

	Heartwood Pine Floors of North Carolina specializes in flooring made of antique heart pine. Nail holes and stress cracks give the floor character, says the company's owner. Click photo for larger image.

As you might expect, antique flooring comes at a premium. Restoring grimy old timbers is a difficult and time-consuming process that requires lots of man hours and special machinery. And because some wood gets damaged in the process, there's also a lot of waste.

"It's not mass production," says Drake. "You can't just churn it out."

Depending on the type and age of the wood and the difficulty of recovering it, you can expect to pay anywhere from about $4.50 per square foot for old barnwood up to $20 or more per foot for the highest grade of heart pine, plus shipping and installation. New hardwood typically costs between $3 to $5 per square foot.

Bargains can occasionally be found. York County-based Aged Woods, for example, recently had several varieties of tongue-and-groove flooring on closeout, including random-width antique yellow poplar for $3 per square foot and 2 1/2-inch-wide antique oak for $3.60 per square foot, plus shipping. Regular prices range from about $8.92 for 3- to 6-inch-side antique heart pine to $20.22 per square foot for 7- to 10-inch antique American chestnut.

Whatever product you choose, make sure you ask for samples and get references from former customers. You also should ask about the company's guarantee and whether the wood can be verified. While the Reclaimed Wood Council, a national trade group, is working to establish standards for antique heart pine and other woods, to date there are no standards to protect consumers. So it's important to choose a seller with a good reputation.

Many customers choose antique flooring to go with their antique houses. For the Kamins, disaster gave them opportunity to do their floor right the second time. They hadn't originally planned to remodel the garden room and its white tile floor as part of a building project six years ago. Then high winds sent a tree crashing through a second-floor bedroom at the rear of the house, and they added the garden room to the project.

"It just didn't feel right putting something brand-new in this room," says Carole, who loves the floor boards' imperfections. "You can't tell they're not original to the house."