This whole issue may seem like glorified penny pinching but did you know that debit card swipe fees provide banks with 20 billion dollars annually? And now with the new cap it has been estimated that store owners and consumers will be spared $7 billion. The fee on a $100 transaction will be about 27 cents, which is a far cry from the $1.50 currently being collected. Establishing the new debit card swipe fees has taken more than five years and it looks as if the process will be well worth it.

If you’re looking for a retailer which doesn’t have any swipe fees to speak of, whatsoever, you should turn to FloorMall.com. You can find great hardwood flooring at incredibly low prices, without any of those pesky hidden fees!

The 2011 state games will include a wide variety of sports, appealing to fans of cycling, golf and and long distance running. Shaw hopes that the design initiative will both draw interest to the games and make the participants feel welcome and valued through their contributions.

For a wide selection of rugs, including NFL area rugs, visit the online store at Floormall.

FloorMall has always been a staunch supporter of Mohawk flooring and they’re eager to see what amazing new products Susan Curtis and her team dream up. FloorMall has a great selection of flooring from the manufacturer. Visit their site if you’re looking for Mohawk hardwood flooring and check out their Blowouts! section for great deals on Mohawk laminate flooring as well.

This wasn’t a great concern in the good old days of the American frontier, when Nature’s bounty was there for the taking, and there were endless tracts of trees to use for dwellings and sustenance. However, rapid industrialization and explosive population growth have taken their toll – 400 years ago, half of the territory of the lower 48 states was covered in old-growth (also known as primary-growth), virgin forests. Today, only a tenth of those remain, and even they are threatened – 4 out of 5 acres of old forest in the Pacific Northwest are cleared for logging activities. Most of America’s remaining primary-growth forests are in national reserves and on public lands; while this provides a measure of protection, there are many business interests that constantly lobby for access to these resources, both the trees themselves and the minerals underneath; nature conservancy groups are engaged in a constant battle for preservation. Furthermore, protected forest enclaves are often cut off by man-made infrastructure, making it often very difficult or impossible for wildlife to cross from one patch of forest to the other, disrupting natural migration patterns, as well as reproduction.

Fortunately, deforestation both in the United States and other developed countries has stabilized, and even reversed in some cases. Second-growth forests that have risen in place of cleared-out primary forests don’t have the same soil profile and ecological complexity, but they do help fight climate change by sequestering atmospheric carbon, and provide shelter for many species of birds, animals and insects.

The most severe deforestation today occurs in the developing world, such as South America, central Africa and South-East Asia, where large tracts of forest are cleared out to make way for agriculture, or to provide consumers in developed countries with cheap and abundant exotic woods. Indonesia, Brazil and the Congo are particularly afflicted by this problem, with tens of millions of acres of trees felled annually; weak and corrupt governments make it difficult to enact and enforce protections. In total, over 2 billion tons of carbon are added to the atmosphere due to deforestation – more than the combined contribution of all forms of transportation put together.

This is why flooring manufacturers and environmentalists alike have come together to find sustainable solutions for flooring. Recycled particle-board and laminate floors are one way to avoid an impact on forests, but most people don’t find this type of cover nearly as appealing as real wood. For customers who insist on actual hardwood flooring, logging companies have selected and bred species of trees that make for a long-lasting and visually-appealing product, while also growing quickly and being easy to harvest.

Bamboo flooring is a champion in this regard – while technically a grass, bamboo is a very tough and fibrous material, and has been used in East Asia for thousands of years, in housing construction, furniture, everyday items, and even writing implements. Bamboo grows thin and hollow, and can’t be made into a solid plank, but with current technologies, it can be glued together in strips to create engineered floors that last for a very long time. The best-known advantage of bamboo is that it’s also probably the fastest-growing flooring material in existence – up to an astonishing 2 inches an hour, under the right conditions. Compare that with an oak tree, which can take over a century to reach maturity, and bamboo turns out to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Another fast-growing source for flooring is eucalyptus. In truth, “Eucalyptus” is a rather large and diverse genus of trees in the Myrtaceae family, with most people being familiar with only a couple of species. The most widely-used eucalyptus product – the fragrant essential oil – is mostly produced from the leaves of Eucalyptus globulus; while used for timber, this species has poor lumber qualities and is difficult to process. However, logging companies have, in recent years, developed Lyptus – a hybrid of two eucalyptus species (E. grandis and E. urophylla) – which is a flooring manufacturer’s dream. It grows extremely fast, for a tree – in the right conditions, a Lyptus plantation turns over in 5-6 years. The wood is dense, uniform and close-grained; it’s versatile, easy to process and is, in many ways, superior to mahogany. Lyptus is a great innovation that can satisfy customer demand for low-cost, quality hardwood floors, while helping preserve rainforests.

There are many second-growth forests that can be safely harvested for flooring in the United States, as well – Appalachia boasts large swaths of hardwood forest, with a prevalence of relatively fast-growing Red Oak (Quercus rubra); many flooring companies are based in states such as Kentucky, and control both the logging aspect and manufacture of flooring, in order to make the process easy and cost-effective. The website Wikiflooring.com goes into great detail about the various wood species used to make hardwood floors, their properties, ease of care and sustainability rating.

There is a number of non-governmental organizations that help track logging to make sure that old-growth, unsustainably harvested wood isn’t being passed off as environmentally-friendly. The most prominent of these groups is the Forest Stewardship Council; founded in 1993, the group incorporates both environmental advocates and industry representatives, and attempts to use market-friendly methods in order to promote sustainable logging. FSC runs a certification program for organizations that conduct inspections; FSC floors are guaranteed to be grown, logged and sourced without causing loss of primary-growth forests worldwide.

After the wood is logged, it is then shipped to be processed at a plant. This is another area where the customer can research their impact on the environment. Most fast-growing wood is raised on plantations in warm climates, with South America being one of the leading producers. Wood sourced in North America typically comes from slower-growing species. However, costs and carbon emissions incurred during transportation are also an important factor. Many American flooring companies, such as Somerset, also control the entire chain of production – they’re headquartered near forests where timber is logged, and have manufacturing and milling facilities nearby, so the logs only need to be transported a short distance before they can be processed. Since timber is mostly processed as close to the logging site as possible, in order to avoid shipping material that will be sawed off and discarded anyway, domestically-sourced wood indirectly provides jobs for American mill workers.

Modern technology has made it possible to saw a log extremely efficiently, using every part of the round to make various construction materials. The photo that accompanies this article is a sculpture by Swiss artist Vincent Kohler, showing all the different profiles and thicknesses of boards that are obtained by sawing a typical round log. The boards can then either be machined down to a solid hardwood plank, or be cut into strips to make engineered floorboards. One of the advantages of engineered boards is that the multi-layered construction varies the direction of the wood grain, which in turn makes the boards more resilient and resistant to deformation from the effects of heat or water.

The flooring market has recently seen another revolution – the advent of Internet marketing. Previously, the customer would need to go to a brick-and-mortar store to buy flooring, but today, they can browse much larger selections online without leaving their home. Online retailers can also provide great deals on engineered and solid hardwood floors, due to their lack of overhead costs associated with maintaining a physical store. On the Internet, it’s also much easier to instantly find information about the provenance of any given hardwood flooring line, its sustainability and environmental credentials. For example, Floormall.com has an entire section, Floormall University, which explains the difference between hardwood engineered and solid flooring, as well as a primer on “green flooring” and some of the alternatives to hardwood.

With myriad options available to today’s consumer, it’s possible to buy hardwood floors that are cheaper and more environmentally-friendly than ever before.

With many Floormall facilities based in Virginia, the company is trying to make sure that orders and deliveries on hardwood flooring and other types of floors are processed as speedily as possible under the circumstances.

The Forest Stewardship Council is a nonprofit organization that has been fighting deforestation worldwide for almost 20 years, doing this by working with flooring companies and other wood-processing industries in order to make sure that the raw materials are sourced in a way that’s renewable and environmentally conscious.

Award FSC hardwood flooring includes a number of lines, such as Cascade, Natural Advantage and Endurance. These floors are both hand-processed to give a vintage feel, and coated with the latest in protective shielding to make them virtually impervious to wear and tear. FSC floors from Award are some of the most durable and style-conscious, and at the same time, environmentally responsible flooring lines available.

The site is meant to help both consumers and builders find green FSC flooring for affordable prices. This includes FSC eucalyptus flooring, a sustainable resource that has been gaining popularity in recent years due to the hardness and resistance to wear that flooring-grade eucalyptus possesses, as well as the incredible speed with which those trees grow.

Buying FSC certified flooring is one of the easiest ways to remodel one’s house while also fighting deforestation.

Tomorrow our prices have to increase because we’re undercutting EVERYONE! Don’t miss this opportunity to save hundreds in the greatest deal on Mohawk flooring we’ve seen all year!

Part of Mohawk Flooring’s Artiquity collection, the Zanzibar line offers hand-beveled exotic hardwood floors for the discerning customer. This exciting line contains such seldom-seen wood varieties as Tigerwood, Teak, African Padauk and Ebony.

The Zanzibar floors are hand-beveled and feature a classic, vintage distressed look. At the same time, all the floors are protected by an CrystalShield aluminum oxide coating, and offer a 25-year finish warranty. With these floors in your home, your guests will never look up. For unparalleled originality and sophistication, Zanzibar floors are just what you need!

You can receive FloorMall’s newsletter via the sign-up at the bottom of every page of their site.

Also, in celebration of the holiday FloorMall has added 8 special products to the top selling section of their homepage.

The writers here at Flooring Now wish everyone a safe and happy Memorial Day Weekend.

Hand-scraped floors have gained a following in recent years, and it’s not difficult to see why – the texture of a hand-processed floor plank is much more expressive and interesting than that of a flat, machined one. Sunlight plays on the delicate grooves, adding a sophisticated roughness and unpredictability to the floor. It’s a texture that you just want to feel with your bare feet.

In addition to the hand-made aesthetic, Virginia Vintage floors also incorporate 50 years’ worth of Anderson technological know-how, including their exclusive Luster-Lock® Ultra finish, which preserves the organic and warm surface of the wood while offering serious protection against erosion, moisture and other damage – there’s a reason these floors are covered by a 25-year warranty.

If you want a home that breathes with individuality and a personal touch, Virginia Vintage floors from Floormall are at your disposal.

Of special note is Columbia’s patented Uniclic feature. The company’s hardwood planks are manufactured with tongues and grooves that snap and lock without glue, nails or flooring staples, making assembly unbelievably easy and painless. Uniclic floors are ideal for do-it-yourself installers, since the feature drastically cuts down on the need for loud and expensive equipment, there is less chance of improper alignment, and it doesn’t take ten minutes with a crowbar to fix a mistake.

There are enough remarkable offerings from Columbia to satisfy the most discerning customer. Come and explore the hundreds of hardwood flooring products on Floormall today!

In addition to exotics, the company has dozens of different product lines which coax familiar oak and hickory wood into showing every conceivable texture and surface across dozens of product lines. The same wood species may glitter with a serious purple and gold, or leap into the sunlight with a pale pink, or ground the room with a vintage Colonial gravitas.

Consider the three flooring varieties in the charmingly literal Anderson Floors Gnarly line. These indestructible oak planks are sold in variable width and length, presenting an engaging tangram puzzle that can be put together in a myriad different ways, each expressing the temper of the room and the personality of the owner. The wood texture is a resolute turbulence of dark growth rings over various shades of classic brown. These floors have enough character that one could compose a still life on them, and only cost $3.52 per square foot.

With their experience, skill and prices, Anderson will never disappoint you.

This is important when using varieties such as tigerwood, which shines and sparkles like a flowing stream of golden dust marbled with jets of calligraphy ink. Fortunately, under Johnson’s expert treatment, the grain, sheen, coloration and character of each wood type are given a chance to shine.

Furthermore, Johnson offers a mind-boggling, multi-generational 50-year residential finish warranty on their Forevertuff exotic line. The pricing is equally impressive – each of the 10 different wood types in the line costs 5-6 dollars per square foot. For a Brazilian walnut, mahogany or rosewood floor that will enliven your house for at least half a century, this is a steal.

We are proud to offer Johnson floors, and recommend them to all of our customers.

Mullican floors are made with a process is truly impressive. Instead of spot-checking the lumber, Mullican goes over every inch of it during every stage of the process. The wood is pre-dressed to the same thickness, stacked to be slow dried to prevent distortions, then ripped to remove any bend. Then, each board is kiln-dried and checked by a moisture meter.

This attention to detail is the reason Mullican products – both solid and engineered – are considered top-tier flooring worldwide. The floors are easy to install, and their customers save considerable amounts of money on labor, waste and returns.

With the great number of American and exotic offerings, painstaking quality and environmental guarantees, a Mullican floor will improve any room

Mohawk also manufactures woven floor products such as carpets, area rugs and mats, with designs by world-renowned artists, craftsmen and designers. The company is a leading recycler of plastic bottles in the nation, with the polyester being re-purposed as a carpeting material. Finally, Mohawk also owns a distribution network with hundreds of delivery trucks and dozens of storage facilities.

The company has excelled in creating hardwood flooring products that are stylish, affordable and durable. Mohawk floors are distinguished by the numerous fantastic lines of exotic hardwoods that the company offers – Teak, Brazilian Cherry, Merbau, and beautiful Eucalyptus are just a few of the wood types that can add style and character to your home. Best of all, many of these product lines are affordable for a middle-class budget – most of the floors are priced at under $5 per square foot.

We are proud to offer Mohawk products because the company has always thought of its cust0mers first, and offers a balance between price and quality that few other manufacturers are able to match.

Somerset pledges on its website to procure the materials in an environmentally responsible and renewable way. The company cuts most of its timber in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky, where its headquarters are also located.

Somerset Flooring is committed to the most optimal usage of the raw material, and offers products made out of every part of the tree. The trunks are sawn into floor planks, but the company also manufactures mulch and pellet fuel, so not even the tree bark goes to waste.

Moreover, the company puts together a 100-year plan for the sourced areas, in order to replace the lost forests for future generations. Somerset is one of the nation’s premier suppliers of kiln-dried Appalachian hardwood flooring, and a model in sustainable and responsible development.

First, the site’s search has been made more accurate and now has the added functionality of auto-complete. This was done to provide customers with faster, more meaningful results. And because the search algorithm is more accurate, minor mistakes made while inputting queries should still provide the correct result.

In addition to the revamped search, FloorMall has also developed a custom quote system for their site. This quote system gives FloorMall’s customer representatives the ability to provide tailored quotes on all their products, including popular brands like Mohawk flooring and Mullican flooring.

Shoppers seeking a custom quote will be guided through the process of selecting the right flooring for their needs by a customer representative. Once this is done, an email containing the quoted price including shipping will be sent to the shopper. From there, they have seven days to purchase their order at the quoted price, or use it as a reference while shopping around.

For more information about the changes FloorMall has made to their site you can review the official release here.

The company also currently has by far the best free cash flow per share in the Home Furnishings industry – 8.23x per share, more than twice the value of the next competitor. Free cash flow is an important indicator of a company’s ability to invest and expand operations, therefore, being this far ahead of the competition means Mohawk is in a great position to expand manufacturing and try to capture new markets for its products.

However, unlike many companies that outsource their production facilities in order to increase profits at the expense of everything else, Mohawk believes it’s important to invest in America and create jobs for American workers, which is why the company just leased a 46,002-square-foot new industrial space in Orlando, Florida.

There’s even more good news for the consumer: Floormall.com is currently holding a month-long sale on Mohawk flooring products. All the products are made to exacting quality standards, and are covered under a warranty, so if you were thinking of getting a new floor that will cost a reasonable price and last for many years, you can’t do better than Mohawk.

Every once in a while you come across a very interesting customer request. Sometimes it’s laying down hardwood for an old prince’s palace or a celebrity that needs high quality cork flooring in their guest house. It is very rare however, to be charged with the task of providing fine tile in the style of a 1920s Pullman rail car. FloorMall is honored to be working with the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth Georgia to restore a prized piece of American history for future generations to see.

Here are some facts about President Harding and his Rail Car:

• His locomotive trip to Alaska, dubbed “the great dream of the duchess,” taken just before the end of his term was to be his last. He fell ill on the train and died soon after at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

• Some suspect that President Harding may have been killed by bad crab meat that was consumed on the train over several days while in Alaska. Some have even gone as far as to say that his wife poisoned him! Though these claims are apocryphal and have generally been discredited.

• The former President, as a testament to his dexterity and sense of adventure, even conducted the train for a portion of his trip from Wasilla to Willow Alaska with his wife, Florence Harding, in the fireman’s seat.

• President Harding was known to have a number of lady friends, including his paramour, Carrie Phillips. Interestingly, the love letters between the President and his female friends have, by court order, been sealed in the Library of Congress until the year 2014!

 If your floor or floors are in disrepair then Summer fun plans may have to be put on hold.  Starting your renovation or floor repair now will get it done in plenty of time for barbecues and outdoor parties.  Hardwood flooring repairs can be as simple as renting a sander, buffing the old finish and scratches out of your floor, and then resealing.  Your flooring has to have a few years of life left in it for this to happen, though.  You can’t refinish what’s not there.  Floors must be made from solid hardwood and not be engineered, for you to be able to sand them.  Good hardwood flooring can be refinished several times.  Poor quality maybe only once.  If you have a period home then the floors are probably quite thick and you’ll do just fine refinishing them.  Grab some free advice from floormall.com and you can see what you may need to buy for your project.

Perhaps there are a few planks that have become damaged in your hardwood floors.  When hardwood flooring is first installed it’s always a good idea to save some pieces of the wood.  Of course, if your house was built a couple of centuries ago, that’s not going to happen.  If you have had your home built, or put in a hardwood floor recently, then  replacing those few planks is pretty easy.  Basically, you have to pry up the damaged ones, cut the new ones to size and then glue and nail them down.  All old glue and nails or staples have to be removed.  Refinishing with a stain and sealer can be a little tricky because it has to be matched and integrated into the old floor.  Some stores can color match stains and paint, because computers are used, so check that concept out if you don’t have a can of the old stain in your garage or shed. 

If you are going to be installing or have installed, an entire room of hardwood flooring, then the choices are many.   Do you have hardwood floors throughout your home or just in this one room?  If you have other rooms with floors like this and if there’s a room separation (perhaps this room has tiles etc.) then there shouldn’t be any problems.  If this room where you are installing or replacing the hardwood in butts up against another hardwood floor, then you may want to get as close to that one’s color and type of wood as you can.  If you have to match hardwoods with another floor, then look online at floormall.com and you can find hardwood flooring of all types.  You’ll be able to match up your old floors that way. 

Whatever way you go, hardwood flooring is an enduring, warm, durable and extremely attractive flooring choice.  Along with stone and ceramic tiles, it’s been around for a very long time.

Have you gotten tired of those funny sounds that floors sometimes make when you walk on them?  Old floors can get really waxy and gummy and look really, really dingy.  Perhaps it’s time to check out some new types of floors that are becoming popular.  Cork flooring is becoming an excellent choice for flooring.  It’s environmentally friendly (cork oak trees re-grow this inner bark in a few years) so it’s renewable, like giant bamboo is.  Although giant bamboo is cut down, it’s just a grass and it does get big really fast so that’s the feature that makes it very “green”.  Cork flooring usually comes in tile form and these do vary in quality and coloration, so checking out some samples online at floormall.com will steer you in the right direction.

One advantage to cork flooring is that you will not be sticking to it.  Cork can be sealed quite nicely so you won’t worry about the porosity very much.  Cork provides warmth and insulation and a certain “bounciness” to your floors.  It’s a new and quite in vogue flooring product for offices, especially.  There are some sound insulating qualities which make it a great choice for the home office.  Libraries, if you are so fortunate to have one of these book repositories in your home, or a den, also are good candidates for cork flooring.  A lot of homeowners can install cork floors themselves but the product may not be available in all home improvement stores.  You can look online at the various types, availability, and installation tips.  Visiting a good site like floormall.com will get you on the right track.

Cork is used for many other things in homes, and not just for the floors.  There’s every college student’s dream of a giant bulletin board where they can stick schedules and photos from home.  In the home office you can also make a section of cork on the wall in front of a desk.  To make this bulletin area more home-like, wrapping a few diagonals of ribbon so that it crisscrosses a bulletin board enables you to slip in photos and notes without having to use pushpins etc.  In fact, if you have a few cork tiles left over from your cork flooring project, you can make one of these as a unique gift.  Always save a few pieces or sections of any flooring you install, for repairs at a later date.  Store them where you’ll be able to get them out if needed!

If you want some information on any types of flooring products, cork flooring included, or any advice or tips for buying or installation, then take a look at floormall.com.  There’s a ton of info on this site that will help you.

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Well, your floor may not be literally blue (or maybe it is) but if it’s sad, then you might consider replacing it.  Sometimes, flooring such as tile flooring or any hard surface, can get stained or damaged and even if it’s a little corner of the floor, that may detract from your overall nice look which you have worked hard to maintain.  If your tile or other flooring has aged, the color difference between old and new tile can be striking.  You may need to purchase all new tile flooring, and there are many different types to choose from.  If you are looking for a bit of solid info on installing the floor yourself, then check out floormall.com.  They have a university section where you can learn all kinds of things about flooring.

Tiles have been around from ancient times and can be made from a host of different materials.  Today, they are ceramic or porcelain or vinyl or real wood (parquet tiles) or cork or leather or stainless steel, or even exotic woods and other substances.  A tile is a square, usually 12″ x 12″ for floors or sometimes 18″ x 18″ or even 6″ x 6″.  Tiles can also be rectangular.  Octagonal tiles can be used for tile flooring and they fit quite nicely together. Think about how a beehive looks inside and the honeycombs all lined up snugly.  Maybe you’d like a blue floor.  Really. 

Different shades of blue tile flooring can depict a sea theme, or lend a nautical air to a seaside cottage.  Be careful if you do blue tiles in a bathroom.  On the floor and on the walls and in the shower could become overpowering.  All one color and you’d feel claustrophobic.  Too dark a color on the floor would be hard to keep clean.  If you need any advice on what type of tile flooring to get, cruise on over to floormall.com.  They’ll offer plenty of great advice.  The ancient Greeks loved blue tiles.  The ancient Egyptians did as well.  If you have a small room, then laying large tiles diagonally makes it look much bigger. 

For our modern floors there are so many choices for tile flooring, or any other kind of floor.  Installation materials and temperature really do matter as to the end results you get when flooring is installed.  Always make sure your floor is level before performing any kind of tile flooring job.  There are cement-like levelers you can pour to make it even.  Installing a subfloor is also a great idea.  Grout is necessary for tiles after you have got them stuck down and this can be either matching, or a different color.  The grout should match the tiles as if it’s too stark a contrast, the tiles can look weird.  Be sure and place spacers between your tiles or your floor may look like a tornado hit it and wrongly laid tiles can be a real mess to get up.  If you need help installing your tile flooring, check out the pros at floormall.com.

If you are starting from scratch and either building a home yourself or having one built, then a first thought should be about what type of flooring you are going to install.  And, do you really want to do it yourself or call in the pros?  If you are replacing one or two floors inside of your already completed home, then that can be a little bit different as to how you will approach the problem.  There are so many floor types these days that a self-installation can be easy.  It depends on the flooring itself.  New homes are usually a combination of tiles (stone or ceramic) and hardwood flooring.  You may choose an easier to install high-quality laminate or engineered flooring, which comes in snap together planks. 

Also under consideration these days is whether your flooring is environmentally safer than some products used to be.  Bamboo, for instance, is a terrific, easily-renewable flooring product.  It can range from glue down planks to cork-backed (therefore already ready to go straight down), snap together planks.  Bamboo comes in light natural colors, or caramelized varieties that add interest.  There are also several ways that the bamboo strips can be placed and this also adds additional contrast.  Gluing down planks requires good knees if you are doing it yourself.  Planks and a high quality glue help.  If you aren’t very up n all of the products available, then a look at a variety of them, plus info on a few professionals, can be had at floormall.com. 

Tiles are a good choice for the home do it yourselfer.  They come in a vast range of materials and can be super easy (peel and stick vinyl) to large, natural stone tiles that can be quite difficult to install.  The thing with natural stone is that it’s always one of a kind because the stone it comes from (limestone, granite, marble etc.) is varied as to thickness and color.  With a truly natural stone tile you need to place the tiles staggered, like you do with a brick wall.  If they are placed in a grid pattern, then you will get quite off kilter at the end of your room.  There is always a variance in the size of natural stone tiles for your flooring, so be sure and use a high quality glue, grout and get a bit of advice from floormall.com.  Don’t forget the tile spacers!

Finally, hardwood floors are so loved and have been used for centuries.  Back in the day, wide planks were used for flooring and today, hardwood flooring comes in random widths and lengths, sometimes engineered (real wood but in layers) and even reclaimed or refinished wood.  Reusing wood taken from a house in another, or refinishing old barn wood or even wood that’s been in a lake for a century, is the ultimate in recycling.  And, you get a product that’s unique and beautiful.