Reclaimed & antique hardwood · Heartwood Exchange · Fellside & the timber counties
Your floor was milled before the war. We keep the spare parts.
Heartwood buys whole floors out of demolition — pitch pine from the comb works, quartersawn oak from the granary, chestnut nobody has milled since the fifties — then scans every board for buried nails, dries it on stickers, and sells the county its own timber back one board at a time. Bring us the gap. We probably have the board.
Nine species on the racks · 38,000 board-feet under cover · every board metal-scanned, de-nailed and moisture-metered before it is priced
The yard on Knot Street
A lumberyard for floors that no longer exist
The timber counties were built out of slow-grown wood, and then they stopped milling it. What remains is already lying on somebody’s floor — so that is where we shop. When the comb works came down in 2019 we bought the floor out from under the wrecking crew, and it has been going back into Fellside hallways one repair at a time ever since. Nothing on the racks is newer than 1965, and nothing leaves unmetered.
The match, or the measure is free
If we cannot match your board from nine species of salvage, nobody in the county can — and the search costs you nothing. When we can, you see the candidate boards laid beside your own floor before a single one is bought.
What we do
Three ways the exchange works
The racks
Pitch pine, quartersawn oak, chestnut, heart cypress, rift ash — bought by the building, sorted by species and face width, stickered and drying to the yard’s own moisture target. You are welcome to walk them; bring the board you are matching, or a photograph and a shamefaced measurement.
Board-matched repair
A gap in an old floor is not a flooring problem, it is a sourcing problem. We bring four to eight candidates from the racks, choose under your window light for grain and tone, then weave the repair flat and sand it in with dustless containment — the seam should be a secret we keep together.
A salvage floor, laid whole
When a demolition floor is too good to break for parts, we move it intact: lifted board by board, de-nailed, re-milled on the tongue, acclimated in your rooms until the meter says floor and subfloor agree, then secret-nailed down as one continuous plane with its history showing.
Services & rates
The exchange card
Same card for everybody from the vicarage to the brew-pub. Repair prices assume the board exists on the racks or within four counties of them; the search rate is capped at three hours unless you are told otherwise at the measure, which is free and ends at the racks with the candidates in your hands.
Board-matched repairfrom $19 / board
Candidates from the racks, woven flat, sanded in place
Salvage floor, supplied & laid$9.20 / sq ft
Re-milled stock, acclimated and metered to your rooms
Stair nosings, copiedfrom $58 / step
Profiles traced and cut from matching reclaimed stock
Species search & sourcing$95 / hour
We hunt what the racks lack, through four counties of demolition
Screen & recoat a salvage floor$2.05 / sq ft
One abrade, one fresh coat — the annual service, dustless
Floor lifted & relocatedquoted per floor
Your boards out of one building and into another, numbered
How it goes
From demolition to your hallway
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
The buy
A building comes down
We bid on the floor before the wreckers do. When the comb works or the granary falls, our crew lifts it first — crowbar, nail puller and a numbering crayon, board by board, two weeks before the machines arrive.
The scan
Metal, found and removed
Eighty years of flooring hides eighty years of hardware: cut nails, staples, a horseshoe we still talk about. Every board passes a metal scanner, then a jack plane across the face to prove it.
The stack
Stickered and metered
Boards dry on stickers in the yard’s shed, pin-metered weekly until they reach the county’s living-room moisture — because salvage that goes down wet cups exactly like new wood does, only more expensively.
The match
Candidates in your window light
We bring the shortlist to your floor. Grain, tone and saw mark are judged beside your own boards, in your own light, and you get the final word before anything is bought.
The weave
Flat, and finished to match
The repair is woven board by board, pinned and glued, then sanded in under dustless containment and finished to blend with the floor it joins — which on a salvage floor means finishing to look slightly unfinished, on purpose.
The timber counties, 2025 — 2026
Floors we matched
Six jobs from the racks this year. The captions name the building the boards came out of, which is the part owners repeat at dinner parties.
The yard, counted
Neighbours
What the counties say afterwards
The plumber took six boards out of the hall for a leak repair and the plumber’s idea of a fix was a rug. Heartwood brought seven candidates in a crate, we chose under the window, and the weave took one afternoon. The seam is somewhere. I am not telling the plumber where.
We bought the granary floor and the granary with it, honestly. Every board numbered in crayon, relaid in the new house in the same order, and the meter readings came home with the invoice. Two winters, not one gap.
A heritage officer, a loss adjuster and my mother-in-law all examined the chestnut border in the same week. All three approved. The adjuster asked where we had found 1920s chestnut and I enjoyed saying a lumberyard that only sells floors that already exist.
Before you drive out
Asked at the racks
The five we hear most Saturdays. Bring the questions and, if you can, the board — a photograph of a board under electric light has started arguments we then had to settle in person.
Can you match a floor that dark with age?
That is most of our work. Age-darkened pine and oak are matched by species and saw pattern first, tone second — the colour we can finish toward, but grain only the original building had. We bring the candidates and finish samples and prove it at your window before you commit.
Is salvage solid only, or can I get engineered?
The racks are solid — engineered boards do not survive a lift. Where the room wants engineered, over a slab or underfloor heat, we use new boards with an honest four-millimetre wear layer and match the colour to your old floor; the reclaimed look is achievable, the reclaimed board is not.
How dusty is the repair work?
Every repair is sanded in under the same containment as a full refinish — machines on HEPA extraction, the workroom sealed and run at negative air. Weaving eight boards makes almost no dust anyway; the containment is mostly there for your peace of mind and our reputation.
What does the moisture meter have to do with it?
Salvage has been drying in a building for ninety years and still moves. Boards are metered at the yard weekly, then again in your rooms before laying, and nothing goes down until floor and subfloor sit within two percent — old wood cups just as readily as new, only with more ceremony.
Will you take my boards in part exchange?
Often, yes — if the demolition floor is a species and section the racks want, we credit the repair against it. The crates in the photograph on this page were paid for exactly that way, by a family replacing pine with pine and walking out even.
The racks are open Fridays and Saturdays, or by appointment · (555) 030-4821 · racks@heartwoodexchange.example
Bring us the gap
A photograph helps; the board itself helps more. Tell us the species if you know it and the year the house was built if you do not — the measure is free, the search is honest about its odds, and the candidates come to your window. racks@heartwoodexchange.example