I am trying to decide whether or not to regret purchasing a lot of reclaimed maple gym flooring. ;)
I managed to get about 1000 sqft of T&G gym flooring at what seemed to be a reasonable price. Now I'm looking at the boards and wondering how much of it will have to be culled.
For the most part (as far as I have dug into the pile, which isn't much) the tongues and grooves seem to be intact. It does look like it will take a significant amount of cleanup though. It looks like "goo" (wax and/or polyurethane) has crept through most of the edges of the boards. I'm assuming I'll probably have to go through board-by-board and clean this up.
There is also some amounts of little checks and splits here and there... edges that are not perfectly square, a missing corner here and there, etc.
Now this is a very vague question, I know, but I'm wondering exactly how perfect this stuff needs to be to look good. I'm trying to discern what amount of imperfection is "cool character" vs. what amount is "throw that board away" vs. what amount is "you wasted your money, toss the whole pile".
So far my google-fu hasn't found a whole lot of detail. I did find
one story where a guy spent a whole lot of time/energy/sawblades/etc ... only to compare to someone else that took part of the same floor and was much less fussy.... and her floor looks pretty damn good.
I'm not on any real time constraints and I'm not opposed to a little labor. But this will also be the first real wood floor I've ever laid. (I've done lots of laminate Pergo-style floors, both glue up and snap together).
I don't have detailed photos (though I can get some later today). For now, all I have is a photo of the pile: