Hand Scraped Hardwood Flooring will Add a Great Look to Your Home

I came across hand scraped hardwood flooring for the first time while on a trip to the countryside with my cousin. Her fiancé’s family owned a dairy farm and lived in a beautiful farmhouse. It was one of those with an old-world air about it, helped not least by the loveliest flooring I had ever seen.

My hostess caught me looking at the flooring. Yes, she said, almost apologetically. It’s old… time to get it redone. No, no, I said. That’s the beauty of it. Yes, it is scarred and scraped but that’s the beauty of it. It tells a story. I tell her that so many people would envy her her natural hand scraped hardwood flooring and that many were actually getting it installed in their homes, in cities and suburbs, to get that very same warmth, character and lived-in look her home has acquired naturally over generations!

I was also getting married and I decided to bounce the idea of replacing our floors with hand scraped hardwood flooring off my future husband. We had already bought one of those Georgian style homes in anticipation of rearing a family and we both wanted the dog and white picket fences. The problem was the previous owners had installed stone flooring. I wanted to bring back the authenticity to the home by getting hand scraped hardwood flooring which would just add to its already charming appearance.

I told him I had looked it up, and though it cost more than other wood flooring, hand scraped hardwood flooring would last forever and any scratches, chips and cracks it acquired over the years would just add to its character. I explained it was made from logs that are hand-scraped to make it look as natural and close to the real thing as possible.

Nowadays, I added, most people go in for pre-finished hand scraped hardwood flooring as they are as easy to install as to replace. The planks are placed separately, allowing them to swell and contract with changes in temperature, and anyway, any cracks and warping that did occur would just help in making the floors look even more authentic as the years went by. I also told him it added to the value of the house, so if we ever needed to put it on the market, we would get much more than we paid for it. That was the clincher.

So, I got my hand scraped hardwood flooring. It may not be the real deal like I saw in that farmhouse but many years from now my hand scraped hardwood flooring will be. And it will have its own stories to tell and secrets to keep.