Anybody ever use flooring in furnture?

[Dan Masshardt]

As anybody ever reused solid hardwood flooring into furnture? I see leftovers sometimes from flooring projects and was thinking it would be cool for a small table too or into a twin headboard.

Anybody?

[Mike Ontko]

Great question! I see a lot of Craigslist posts in my area for clean and unused hardwood flooring materials, usually for reasonable prices, and have wondered the same thing. Thinking about it though, I don't think it would be such a great idea because most of the pieces are only 3" to 4" in width and it'd be pretty tough to get matching grain patterns on multiple pieces if you were to glue them together to make boards that were sizeable enough for building things. And, once you rip off the tongues and grooves, you're left with an even thinner strip of material than you started with.

Other than beadboard or door panel inserts, I can't think of too much to do with large amounts of 3"-4" strips.

[Dan Hulbert]

Being stricken with male pattern cheapness (according to my wife) and having installed hardwood floors in three houses over the years, I've built lots of things from the leftovers. None of it would ever be considered "fine woodworking", but for shop storage, jigs, crates, and mud room racks, it works fine.

I like to keep the tongue and groove to add strength to the joints and help with alignment. If you look closely at the end of the board, you'll notice that the tongue and groove are cut to allow the face edges to contact while leaving the bottom with a gap. Great for floors, not so much for other stuff. To compensate for that, I typically rip the boards slightly to align the top and bottom edges of the groove. This is usually enough to allow the boards to clamp up flat. If that is not enough, a slight rabbet cut on the top edge above the groove will do the trick.
Since I’m usually working with leftovers, I spend more time arranging the boards to get the sizes I want rather than fussing over grain matching. Actually, commercially prepared flooring is already fairly well grain matched or the floor would look bad.
¾ prefinished yields a little less than 5/8 after planning off the lands on the bottom and the finish from the face.
I recently worked with a few pieces of bamboo flooring at my daughter’s house. Similar processes, but man-o-man is that stuff hard and splintery. It looked pretty good when done, but I’m glad she doesn’t have any more for me to use when I go to visit.

The free is better hobbyist.

[glenn bradley]

I used parquet flooring for a framed table top once upon a time.

[Allan Speers]

It's an interesting question.

I'm thinking that thick flooring could probably make decent drawers.

[Greg R Bradley]

I make lots of stuff out of free flooring samples. I just have customers give me the obsolete samples.Here's a cart I made out of flooring samples to store more flooring samples. You can see more flooring samples being used in the back right as a lower shelf on a Rockler Steel Shop Stand:

Flooring_Cart.jpg

Here's a HD Cart made out of free flooring samples. I tore apart more samples and recovered the 1" solid oak to use for the cross pieces that mount the casters and spread the load. This one is about half loaded with 400 pounds of hardware, which will shortly be 800 pounds but then you couldn't see the flooring:

HD_Cart.jpg

Here's a vertical cart to store long lumber and other supplies. It also stores my foam used to cut small sheet goods in the driveway with my tracksaw:
Vert_Cart.jpg

How's that for being frugal?

[John C Bush]

Our previous home, built in the early 50's, had wall to wall mahogany flooring (Santos M., pretty stuff but not Honduran). Planks alternated 8" and 5" wide. When the buyer tore the old ranch style down to build his 6800 sq. ft. new crib, he let me salvage all the old flooring I could haul. Most boards are 10'ers. We refloored our bonus room and I have built many projects with the leftovers. Still have lots waiting for the next project. The bottom is corrugated ~~1/8" and after planing I get a good 5/8" thickness remaining. Very straight grained and has a nice red/brown color with natural oil finish. Smells nice when machining too.

[roger wiegand]

I've got a pile of leftover birdseye maple that I use whenever possible. Cut the t&g off, plane the groove off the back and you're good to go. A bit thin, but frequently useful.

[Jim Dwight]

I use 3/8 engineered and solid flooring for zero clearance plates for my Ryobi BT3100 table saw. I had some 3/4 hickory left over after installing it in several rooms of our house and used them to make a parallel jig for my track saw and another jig for setting the track. I didn't have a lot of leftovers. I have a bunch of old white oak flooring, nominally 3/4, that is stored in a low ceiling area over the garage. Not sure what I will do with it. My wife doesn't want me to reinstall it because I broke some tongues and grooves getting it out. I carefully pulled the nails, however. I plan to use a little of it for patching but I probably have 250-300 square feet - more than I will use for patches. My project when I am using up my vacation between Thanksgiving and Christmas will apparently be a new double bed for one of the girls rooms. It will be mostly oak so maybe some of this flooring can be used in that.

I don't like to throw away good wood. If I can use this old flooring in some projects I would like that a lot better than hauling it off. It could make nice panels in a headboard or footboard.

[paul cottingham]

I use a pile of old Ipe flooring that a buddy gave me for shop stuff. As an example, i made a tall tray for my spooncarving tools and used the flooring for the bottom. I built a small "chairbuilders" bench and used it for the shelving i put across the stretchers. It had the unintended and helpful side effect of making the bench much more rigid.

[Tom Blank]

Be cautious of prefinished flooring. I got some prefinished walnut from a buddy and when planing off the finished surface, it ate up my HSS planer knives and hand plane irons before I figured out what the problem was. There is something very abrasive in the filler they used.

[paul cottingham]

Be cautious of prefinished flooring. I got some prefinished walnut from a buddy and when planing off the finished surface, it ate up my HSS planer knives and hand plane irons before I figured out what the problem was. There is something very abrasive in the filler they used.

Damn straight. That is why i use it for purposes where it doesnt need to be planed.

[Ted Calver]

I resaw the finish off on the band saw and use the wood to make small boxes and cigar box guitar finger boards.

[Jim Becker]

Actually, I have. A contractor friend of mine was cleaning out his storage area awhile back and gave me a whole bunch of odds and ends, including some random width oak flooring. (and pine bead board) Some of the oak was used after re-milling for some small projects; other pieces were used for more mundane things which was much nicer than it ending up in a landfill.

Since most flooring is T&G and has milled relief on the back, applications like filling a backboard for things like the headboard you mention are great ways to use it. Of course, one issue with flooring is that the grain is often pretty random, too...and that needs to be taken into consideration relative to the specific project.

[Jim Wheeler]

I've never made anything out of it myself, but thirty something years ago I saw coffee tables made of used, reclaimed flooring in a custom furniture store. It was the old tongue and groove, two and a half inch wide jack oak that was used in houses back in the thirties and forties. It was stained with something - probably a rusty nail solution - that turned it almost blue-black in color. Not unattractive.

Jim


He who welds steel with flaming pine cones may accomplish anything!​