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Prefinished Prime grade Pine flooring from SYP Direct
12 Sep

Prime Grade

Heart Pine

Prime grade is uniform in color, very few, if any knots. Colors in a range from golden brown to red brown heartwood.  While both rustic and prime grades contain a minimum of 85% heartwood, rustic has knots. Some might call it character. Prime grade is virtually clear except occasional small pin knots. Color is more consistent and harmonious, with a high degree of red heartwood and limited sapwood.

Rustic and Prime Grade have 85% heartwood & this is why that matters.

​

Heart Pine floors are sold based on this number which should contain a range, such as 50-80% or in 85%, as with the rustic and prime Caribbean Heart Pine. In fact, these floors contain the highest percentage of heartwood found in any new heart pine except for actual old growth, which is extremely hard to find and awfully expensive. So, with that in mind can you choose which of these boards is new and which are reclaimed? Tell them it came from a two-hundred-year-old Kentucky Horse barn; they will never know if you finish it right!

Prime grade might be what you imagine when thinking about Heart Pine flooring, classic if you will. The colors are more uniform compared to our rustic grade, of course but there does exist enough variance to make it “interesting.”  Prime Grade Caribbean Heart Pine will have a few tiny pin knots compared to the larger knots and sapwood in the Rustic grade. Prime Grade wide plank Caribbean Heart Pine screams luxury, email us for recent customer pictures and samples.

Sometimes you feel like a knot, sometimes you don’t.

Prime Grade Caribbean Heart Pine

How to install real wood floors
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Real wood flooring
17 Dec

Real wood flooring

Wood Floor Shopping

Real wood floors are the only constant you find in million-dollar homes. Do not take my word for it, ask your friend the realtor, most of us have one or more. So, if engineered wood and laminate are so great, why are they not in these homes? Are real wood floors more expensive than engineered?  They are if you believe what you find on the Internet, seriously the entire internet. More propaganda exist around the subject of your floors than any other product for your home. In fact, finding someone to tell you 100% of the truth is difficult, as some of you may understand after your own search

Say no to bundles

Installation included always means one thing, it will be fast. Everyone wants to offer bundled services that rarely include real wood for two basic reasons, time, and money. How many trips does a real wood floor take versus engineered or laminate? To clarify, we are referring to a site finished real wood floor, not premanufactured aka prefinished. Well of that depends upon the type of finish, for example Monocoat requires less trips than Tung Oil. Even that distinction depends upon the number of Tung Oil coats, not Monocoat though right? Just seeing if you are paying attention because this next part is important.

So, if Jane the contractor can come to your home twice versus four or ten times, make more money and give you a worthless warranty which will she choose? Survey says, 80% do not offer site finishing at all and about 5% specialize in real wood. How did this happen? When did we start believing fake is better than real? Do you think fake floors are green because we are not cutting down trees? That is 100% the opposite of the truth- seriously. To find out more follow us to Real wood is Green give us a call for more discussion.

Researching Harwood Floors Online

If you are researching hardwood floors online you may notice that the term does not mean solid real wood floors, not at all.  You may find laminate hardwoods, two words that define oxymoron. Researching floors is wading through a sea of bad choices if adding value to your home is the goal. Only solid real wood floors are an investment, the rest are simply a future liability, yours or the next homeowners.  Here is one example of the worst offenders, Angies List. Not because the people are bad but because the run their business as if they are helping homeowners, not entirely true. Their customers are not homeowners but the professionals who list their services, you know the 95% who want you to buy LVT?

Comparing engineered versus real wood floors as investment flooring versus a single use durable good

Yes, we have prefinished floors without any production lead time including Bayou Rustic and two trusted sources. Bayou Rustic manufacturers finished to order heart pine using SYP Direct floors, exclusively, lead times are based on type of finish.  However, years in this business allowed SYP Direct to create a powerful pair of sources for manufacturer direct pine floors. These products include but are not limited to, prefinished #2 Caribbean Pine which can be found with three options, Fawn, Vintage and Natural.

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Real wood flooring last forever
05 Dec

Real Wood Floors

Customer Bill of Rights, Misconceptions, Misdirections and Misinformation, Wood Floor Shopping

Understanding Solid Wood Floors

Before you shop and buy real wood floors, you should understand them. Before you install them, understanding solid wood floors is key. Please do not take offense to the insinuation you should understand solid wood floors. In fact, we you are referring to our specialty, pine the lack of knowledge among installers is shocking. Solid wood flooring site finish and installation is an art, a lost one for that matter. Not long-ago artisans and craftsmen took pride in sanding, finishing and repeating! Today time is money and real wood takes time.

Buying solid wood usually means a site finish

Site finished pine flooring needs preparation. Preparing for the wood is an important step often overlooked, the preconditioning portion of the finish. When you have unfinished solid wood floors with character, i.e. knots, different grain patterns and variance in density you need a product that prevents splotchy finishes. It is not expensive, but vital. Min-wax, for example has an excellent product.

Sanding unfinished solid wood floors

“Do you have to sand prior to finish?” The short answer is no, but we always add, only if you want your floors to look their best. Sanding your unfinished floor prior to preconditioning allows for deeper penetration and better protection not to mention it raises the grain allowing the colors to pop free. Commonly known as popping the grain and accomplished by simply running a wet rag down the board as you pull them out of the pallet crate.

Mill to order makes install easy

Milled to order is not a marketing term for us, we do not mill inventory to sit on shelves and one day match with another inventory. By milling your floors all together, on the same day from the same “trees” provides a consistent floor which goes together as it should. SYP Direct mills Alabama Longleaf Pine lumber into unfinished Knotty and Heart Pine flooring. We mill to order, for homeowners and builders, furthermore with no minimum order. We can customize your order in ways that save you time and money. Grades, widths, length (s) are just three of the ways our mill to order model benefits our customers. There is no other SYP Direct, we say yes to solid wood, every single time.

Stop leasing temporary floor covers

NullLeased flooring all has the same residual value, it cost you and the environment money, every single time. Our philosophy, One House, One Floor has at its core one absolute; there is never a reason to buy engineered floors unless you are a prison, state university or hospital. Real is better than fake, real wood is green and yes, the answer is yes you can glue down solid wood.  Southern Yellow Pine Direct welcomes all of you homeowners told solid wood is too expensive or cannot be glued down. Welcome to a place where logic still exist, we tell the truth. For example, LVT is not waterproof, warranties are worthless, you can glue down solid wood and real wood is certainly more durable than single use leased covers.

Advertising by box stores

Today a Google search for the best solid wood pine floors sends you Clover Lea pine wood floors, LL Flooring formerly lumber liquidators.  These are the exact opposite of quality for a number of reasons.  Buyers many times have no clue the difference in quality, it is substantial to say the least.

Angie’s List wrong on flooring

Real wood floors

Buying real wood flooring online can lead you to Angie’s list for an installation professional. Remember, Angie get her money, i.e. the customers are contractors or brands who advertise. Who will tell you the truth about pine and real wood floors in general? SYP Direct presents the A List; a resource without agenda. The amount of misinformation passed off as a “resource” designed to help you find your floor, by our totals, about 95% of it.

Free Markets are good when fair

We are not anti-free markets, not at all. However, under a cloud of propaganda we believe, with zero doubt that homeowners are getting ripped off. A Google search, finding real wood floors, provides Angie’s List as a top result. Not to strange, since they do have hardwood flooring companies on their site (s). However,  further inspection, Angie’s seems to be repeating the same nonsense as the box stores and your local installer trying to sell you “their” floors.  

Buying Real Wood Flooring

Buying real wood flooring online can be aggravating, almost as bad as going into a box store. So how do you find and buy real pine floors online? The age and species are a perfect place to start. Determining the age of pine should determine the price of flooring, not lumber but the ‘stuff we walk on’. Age creates stability, stability and character not to mentions the colors we all love. Patina is a word directly associated with age and light exposure, with older wood the patina is deep and rich; i.e more expensive.

Investment Approach to Flooring

Antqiue reclaimed heart pine wall wood siding only comes from using real woodSo you want to buy real wood floors, solid not LVT or laminate, a floor not a floor cover.   Very few sources of information will provide the truth from the homeowner perspective. Compare heart pine wood floors to a single use floor such as laminate or engineered wood, one last forever the other is just a lease. Single-use floor covers provide returns for the seller, not the homeowner. A single use floor is designed to wear out as it is a product; an investment is a durable good. Does anyone remember the phrase planned obsolescence? To refresh your memory, it is by definition; “a policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete.  Frequent changes in design, termination of spare parts, and the use of non-durable materials make it impossible to match a damaged floor.

Invest in Solid Wood Floors

What is investment flooring? Is flooring an investment or a product? A product is designed to be used for a period of time. An investment, while it may fulfill the same purpose as the product such as walking on the floor, it is not designed to fail one day. An investment floor provides a return as well as a function, i.e., increased home value. Real wood floors are an investment, single use floor covers are just a lease. Yes, a lease, you are paying to use a product that will have no residual value. On the other hand, a real wood floor will last forever, saving you money every seven years or a dividend of sorts, like a bond or preferred stock.

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Southern Yellow Pine Direct offer homeowners the reliability of an A+ rated BBB company; the best quality, pricing and service bar none. We operate under an "old school" philosophy that the customer is always right. We make sure you are just that by educating and dispelling myths about Southern Pine and Heart Pine flooring.
Remember we are a mill to order manufacturer of unfinished and prefinished Southern Pine, including our speciality Heart Pine. Our lead times are normally about two weeks, with Hardwoods and Imports the lead times vary and that is an understatement. 2 days -2 months has bee the answer since COVID. But things are imporving, as White Oak prices continue to fall. (Jason Howard 9/9/2022)
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