Important Notice! Don't Spend Money on Flooring before You Have a Look at This

Cordwood flooring tends to be both beautiful and 'warm'. It can be planned and geometrical or more freely artistic. Sunny Pettis Lutz chose a very free, artistic approach to her cordwood flooring and provides both pictures and detailed, step-by-step instructions so that you, too, may create a beautiful, unique floor of your own. But, to get your creativity flowing, you definitely need to check out this Cordwood Flooring by Sunny Pettis.

Step one is to harvest wood. If you don't have access to wood on your own property, then you can visit the Forest Service office or ranger station and purchase a wood harvesting permit. Obviously you will end up with different types of wood depending on where you are located. Sunny utilized Shaggy Bark Juniper and Alligator Bark Juniper from her local state forest. All you will need to take in order to harvest the wood is a pick-up truck, axe and chainsaw. She suggests collecting wood close to the road on the uphill side, because �no one wants to be dragging these logs from the down-slope side.� (Good advice!) After you cut down the dead wood, attach your forest permit to it and lug it home. This is when the real fun begins.

Typical cordwood construction is a term used for a natural building method which utilizes cordwood and masonry, or cob, to build walls. Remains of cordwood structures date back as far as 1,000 years in northern Greece and Siberia. The exact origin of cordwood construction is unknown, however it is believed that it began in Quebec, Wisconsin and Sweden all around the late 1800's. This method was mostly chosen due to its inexpensive building materials and ease of construction. It is a highly economical use for log ends and fallen trees and, as such, is very eco-friendly. While many types of wood can be utilized, the most desirable rot-resistant woods are Pacific Yew, cedars and juniper. Other acceptable woods include Douglas fir, Eastern white pine, spruce pine and poplar. These woods will shrink and expand in lower proportions compared to dense hardwoods such as elm, maple and oak.

After you determine which wood is good and which should just be thrown in your next fire, it is important to run all your gathered woods through the chop saw at 1�. Then you can further sort through the disks. This is the easy part. There is a lot of preparation that goes into readying the floor surface and further preparing the wood disks. Many people would tend to go for disks that look similar. But remember: you have a large space to cover, differently shaped disks can come in handy for filling certain voids and, unless you are going to measure out every disk and cut to the exact same sizes, you want your all your disks to be unique. The pictures of Sunny's cordwood floor are beautiful and, clearly, she knows what she's talking about. If you are considering similar flooring, you really should read her step-by-step guide first!