Flooring experts reclaimed pine for floors

[Dave Dionne]

Hi All
Just need some direction. I am pulling up some old groth pine from attic floor to use as flooring in an entry way. The attic floorboards are between 10" and 14" wide or wider and up to 14' lenght. They have been nailed down for 200 or so years so dry and pretty flat. beside using a metal detector and a brush to get the grit out before plaining them to clean them up, what else to you recommend?

I am going to nail them down with square cut nails like the rest of the original floors have (they are covered but will be redoing some soon) How much space should I leave between with these? how about the edge next to the base boards how much os a gap? Should I predill them to prevent splitting?

Thanks in advance

Dave

[Jim Becker]

If you orient the cut nails with the grain, you will not have a splitting issue in my experience. That said, you need to set them below the surface so you don't sand them to a gleaming sparkle if sanding is part of the plan. I have that issue with some fill-in that I need to do in our great room for the new material and the floor folks are going to have to set all ten-billion existing cut nails (25'x22' room) before they sand to refinish the existing wide pine floor.