[OP]
Contributor
I am planning to put hardwood flooring in my house when build. Have customer that get wood from at times he has few thousand feet of walnut hardwood flooring. Wondering how it holds up to abuse. Nother option wood be hickory. We are planing to use cherry trim and doors .
Contributor
Hickory is much harder than walnut, and so it dents less.
There's something called the Janka hardness scale. Basically it measures how deep a dent is made when you press a certain steel marble into the wood with a certain force. Here's a link to a page with lots of results. http://tinytimbers.com/pdf/chart_janka.pdf As you can see, hickory is much more dent-resistant than walnut.
Contributor
Walnut's not all that hard (1010 Janka) compared to hardwoods typically used for flooring, although I have seen a couple of walnut floors, and it is certainly harder than the pine floors (SYP = 870 Janka) I've seen even more frequently. As long as you don't wear your outdoor shoes on it, or have a rambunctious dog, it probably would be fine. Hickory, on the other hand is HARD (1820 Janka) and tough and will take a lot of abuse. The color would go better with cherry, too, so it would be my preferred option of the two.
John
Member
If you would like to do some decorative floors, you can put a walnut stripe around a room that looks cool. Saw a floor with flooring laid so it wrapped around a room with a walnut course about 2' from the wall. It is a lot of extra work to do decorative floors, but if you have the time, it can be really unique.
[OP]
Contributor
the janka info is good. We are thinking of using a rustic cherry stained darker so think the walnut color will work. just really tempting to use the walnut cause can get good deal.. the hickory would be way more exspensive. we are plaing to build next summer and my to do list keeps growing along with the coasts ....
Contributor
Walnut & cherry are soft. How they will hold up for flooring depends on the family living in the house. I have seen walnut & cherry floors that looked great years & I have seen others that looked awful in a few months.
If the family has small children & or does a lot of entertaining, then stay away from softer woods for floors. Toys & high heeled shoes or anything else with a small contact point will ruin a soft floor in no time.
Member
If you can get the walnut cheep, go for it! I wouldn't recommend hickory for floor unless very narrow width- prone to extreme movement with moisture swings- especially compared to walnut which is very stable and will stay nice and tight. Hickory will develop large spaces. One caution on walnut though, if used in rooms with moderate to heavy sun exposure it will bleach out the nice dark color to blond- I wouldn't think that desirable. Certainly a little. More thought and care will be necessary if you use the walnut to avoid damage, but that should be easy.
I've made and installed tens of thousands of feet of wood floors, that floor is gonna look great!
Peter
Member
Hickory would be great for flooring if you could get nails through it.
Contributor
I have cherry and mahogany floors and both look great after 15 years. We are pretty careful and have girls and small dogs so that helps. Cherry gets very red over the years and walnut gets lighter and more yellow with age so I'm having trouble visualizing how they will age together. Hickory can be stained to match better and if carefully dried will be a good floor. Much of hickorys movement comes during the drying process and it is fairly stable when cured if you don't let you inside humidity get way out of whack. Cherry is hard to stain and can look very blotchy. Our floor and trim was natural and light when it went in and now is dark except for under the rugs which now can never be moved. Dave
Member
Here in SE Pa. many old farmhouses were built using white oak on the first floor and poplar for their second floor. The 200 year old poplar floors across the street have held up fairly well given how soft poplar is. I think Walnut floors will work just fine.
Member
I had a house prior to this one that was built in the 1880s. The floors were walnut, maple and cherry in a geometric design that looked like the borders of a Persian rug. For the LR, DR and "sitting room" these floors held up remarkably well. They could have been resanded at some time.
The entry hallway was worn badly and I had a flooring company replicate the patterns in walnut and maple. It took a long time, they really enjoyed the work and it was worth the effort.
The pattern was a border in strips of alternating woods from ~3 inches to a foot wide and ran all the way around the room with a solid color central area [walnut as I recall] that was around 1/4 to 1/3 of the room's area.
The baseboards were 12 inch cherry!
Apparently a gold miner who hit it big built this house as a wedding present for his daughter. Wow.
So if you are wondering about wear, and unless a 100+ year horizon is too short I'd say go for whatever appeals to you.
It could be that back then the woods were old growth and tougher. That I don't know.
I'd say get creative. A solid walnut floor could look boring.
[OP]
Contributor
All good info.. the walnut would be in 3, 4, & 5" widths. For lay out would need same amount of each width?
Member
I don't think the widths matter a lot. If you wanted the "Persian carpet" look obviously whatever widths you chose would have to be the same all the way around the room. Staggered widths look better to me than all the same.
It may take some arithmetic to figure the lineal amounts of each wood. Plan on a bit more waste than for a flat floor.
I wish I had a photo handy but as I recall there was a perimeter of walnut about a foot to 18 inches wide; a strip of maple [?4 inches?]; some 6 or 8 inches wide of cherry; another narrow maple strip and then the larger uniform center panel of walnut.
Fiddly and more time consuming to install but unlike a solid colored floor that nobody notices but you this will have instant WOW appeal and adds class to a room. It will also show well if/when you come to sell so is worth the trouble.
Member
If you use different hardwoods just for accents, the hardness is less of an issue.
Maple with black walnut and cherry inlays.
1.jpg
Member
Walnut will not hold up well unless everyone wears pillows on their feet! You can mark it with a thumb nail with ease. Hickory or white oak would be great and there are several exotics which don't even wince at large pet traffic. My large dog can't harm the jatoba flooring I put down, lovely colour too.
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