Special
Who has products for giving a wooden floor/parquet a distressed look?
OLD WOOD HAS RUN OUT! WHAT NOW? THE RIGHT PRODUCTS CAN GIVE NEW WOOD AN OLD LOOK
Photo – Williams & Koch
Why should we distress wooden floors? The answer to that question is relatively simple: Real old floors or old wood from cloisters, castles, old train wagons, old and weathered bollards, cheese boards, and such like are now so scarce that prices also reflect that shortage. The ‘real stuff ’ is for the happy few. Yet demand for those floors is no less great, so what do we do? To answer that question we need a solid dose of creativity and technique. ‘Chemistry’ invariably lends a hand as well.
Imitating years of use
Mechanical distressing
Chemical distressing
In general, there are two ways to make new wooden floors look older, namely mechanical distressing and chemical distressing. Strictly speaking, we have two goals with mechanical distressing. Firstly, we want to give the impression that the floorboards have been produced using antiquated techniques from a century ago (brushing and scraping) and, secondly, give the impression that the floors have undergone years of use (by beating, drumming, and lashing).
Chemical products or interventions can affect the colour of the wood. With colour distressing we use special pigments or colour oils to give the impression that a new parquet floor is really an old one. Shades of white and grey are extremely popular for doing that. This is commonly called white wash or even super white wash. With the latter, the floor is brushed lightly first. If you apply a white wash, you get a floor which is matt and a little chalky. Extremely dark colours can also help to give an antique look. We also achieve dark colours by ‘smoking’.
Imitating old techniques We all know that technology is making great strides. Machines from about 10 years ago did not yield the same quality as those of today. That’s to say nothing about machines from 100 years ago! A century ago, it was not possible to saw straight without the sawing blade moving visibly. The same goes for planing! Likewise sanding. Whereas nowadays we can sandpaper to perfection by deploying various abrasives in succession, in ‘the good old days’ we had to rely on brushes. If we apply these old materials and techniques to a brand new oak wooden floor, we largely give the impression that the floor originates from ‘a different era’.
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Another way of distressing floors is to give the impression that they have been in use for decades. This can be done by creating marks of use. By beating and drumming, we give a floor certain damage which looks like traces of high traffic or consumption of floorboards by insects or micro-organisms. By making some small holes we can imitate woodworm damage, a frequent occurrence in older houses on floors in pine or pitch pine. Beating reinforces the used effect of the floor.
Smoking Smoking wooden floors is one of the most popular and most attractive distressing techniques. Smoking is a process in which a reaction is generated with the tannic acid in the wood. A lot of wood sorts have either no or insufficient tannic acid to evoke an aged colour. Oak does have enough tannic acid, especially in the form of European oak and American oak. Russian or Chinese oak has much less tannic acid and can only be smoked lightly at best.
