Blackbutt Floor

The few wet pictures show just how spectacular these floors would have been, finished in a high gloss polyurethane

However, the lower sheen finishes are all the rage, and as the rest of the photos show it leaves the boards with a super classy look

Blackbutt flooring is one of those timbers that has a fair variation in colour, from a dark brown right through to pale blonde in throughout the floor...but, even with the differences in colour tone it all still works brilliantly

One thing you might notice, particularly in the pic below, is that there appears to be light bands of colouring going across many of the boards 

This is referred to as 'stickering'. 

What causes it is, when the boards were being dried out somewhere, either at the timber mill or a wood yard they place tiny sticks of wood in between the boards to separate them and allow the air to pass through, as part of the drying process

The problem with that is some timbers, and Blackbutt's one of them, react with whatever the timber that was used as sticks. It's basically a chemical reaction and it causes the tannins within the timber to leach out and produce these lighter stripes across the boards

The owners here picked these boards up pretty cheaply from an auction house...and that's the reason they were 'a bargain' the sellers knew of the marks on the boards, but the owners weren't aware of them until the floor was laid and the original lot of sanding and polishing had been done

It pays to check things out