So, as much as I enjoy opening up a green tree and dealing with freshly milled green wood, I love old wood at least as much.

Both the cabin siding and flooring will be made from old wood. Its always fun to see what one can coax out of old wood.

Below are three 1x12 Douglas fir board-and-batten siding boards that were salvaged from a historic granary in nearby Potlatch, Idaho. From what I was told, the granary was built in the 1920s. I bought 700 board ft. of the siding from Larry Duff's TimberWorks wood salvage business. This might not be quite enough, but he has more. :-)

Most/all of the boards have residual red barn paint on them. The leftmost board was covered in boiled linseed oil. The rightmost board was covered in Landark's exterior penetrating oil finish. The middle board was left alone. The oil really brings out a gorgeous, dark purple color. This will no doubt fade, but the oil should help preserve the wood. This old, dry, rough-cut wood was amazingly thirsty. I think it might be prohibitively expensive to use Landark on the whole think, so straight linseed or maybe some inexpensive deck oil might work.



The goat barn flooring cleans up nicely, and I am very, very happy with it.

Below, the old, grayed, unhandled barn flooring is shown on the right. On the left, is a board after one pass through the thickness planer and a bit of coarse (120-grit) belt sanding. The middle two boards were planed, belt sanded (120 grit), covered in Landark oil, and then waxed and buffed with Bioshield hardwax.



Below. To oil or not to oil? Verdict: oil!



Below: A dramatic difference.




Finally, an up-close image of the final flooring. I purposely used a moderately coarse sanding. I like the look of coarsely sanded wood in a cabin like this. Most of the other wood (timbers, interior pine wall planks, etc) are also coarsely sanded. It saves time, but mainly I prefer the smooth but slightly "distressed" look of coarsely sanded wood on a cabin like this.




Fun stuff. I think this floor and siding combination are going to rock. Its going to look very rustic on the exterior, like an old barn. The red, dark color of the rustic fir flooring will accentuate the light pine posts, ceiling, and interior wall planks. The cabin is going to be all-wood, but that doesn't mean that it won't be colorful!