When it comes to buying hardwood flooring, many homeowners find the cost too steep. Others have the money for hardwood flooring but they have ideas about painting or altering the flooring to suit their style. For others, hardwood is simply too expensive to paint or alter in some significant way. However, that’s not always the case. If you choose odd lot hardwood flooring, you could get a great hardwood floor for a very bargain price.
What are Odd Lots?
When hardwood flooring planks are processed, not every plank works out the way it was intended. Sometimes, the wood is cut in a way that causes it to crack or splinter. Other times, the heat of the saw blade or the sander can actually burn the wood itself. In other cases, the wood just might be surplus. For example, if a batch of wood creates 200 square feet of hardwood planks but only 190 square feet are sold, that leaves 10 square feet of extra hardwood planks. That’s not enough to create a complete lot of wood but too much simply to discard.
Those two different types of wood, surplus, and damaged wood, create what is known as odd lots. Oftentimes, a company will sell odd lots at a discounted rate. You’ll be able to get that wood at a very affordable rate.
Caveats
Odd lots of wood are a great choice if you want to achieve a rustic look or if you intend to paint your floor. However, some odd lots might include wood that does not have the structural integrity of other types of hardwood planks. Furthermore, the wood will not match. Even if all of the woo di the same type of tree, it won’t match because it will be different batches from different trees. The grains won’t match, and many of the planks will have blemishes that are sometimes considered undesirable. They’re desirable if you’re trying to achieve a rustic look, though. The rustic look involves mismatched wood, blemished wood, and very prominent grain patterns.
Benefits
In addition to being less expensive, odd lot hardwood planks are great for experimentation. For example, if you want to paint your hardwood floor an unconventional color, you can do that with odd lot planks. You won’t have to worry about changing the wood. Since the wood will likely be mismatched anyway, you can freely paint it or stain it. You can also experiment with different textures such as hand scraping or brushing.