Selling our 1910 pine floor to buy new oak?

[lifebeginsat40]

So I'm in the process of restoring my 1910 pine floors, and while having a nightmare of a time finding real reclaimed pine (and not just recut scaff boards!) I had a thought. How feasible is it to sell my old pine floor to fund a new oak one?

I can buy new character grade oak boards for around £70sqm and I've seen people selling real old pine around the same price or more. Plus I'd be saving money on buying replacement boards myself as well as on renting the floor sanding kit I'd need to do the job.

So anyone want to bring me back down to earth and tell me why this couldn't be done?

 

[fernicarry]

Have you tried lifting any of your existing boards? Its really tough to get them up intact never mind in a good enough condition for someone to give you folding for them.

The floors most likely would originally have gone down before the internal walls with the partitions floating on the boards and quite possibly nailed into the boards. Similarly skirting boards fitted over the boards, scribed to follow the profile.

Not saying you can't do it, but you're making a lot of extra work unless you are already refitting a bare shell.

Do you have another room you could sacrifice the boards from to make good in this room? You'll have all the same issues getting them lifted but at least they'll be a decent match. Both our bathrooms still had their floorboards despite being overboarded with ply and tiled. I was able to carefully lift those and get a number of usable boards that I've eked out to make repairs in other rooms.

 

[Cubist]

As well as seconding @fernicarry I would also add the following thoughts; always assuming you have somewhere dry and large enough to store the old boards have you considered how long you may need to store them for? No matter how well you might protect them they will draw damp like the proverbial wick and begin to rot and perhaps become infested. That duration would almost certainly become protracted by the fact that most potential purchasers are unlikely to want the job lot and will just pick and choose the pieces they want and leave you with a slowly diminishing pile of rotting wood. Also, Trade buyers are deeply unlikely in the first instance and would be unwilling to pay more than a scrap price never mind the premium rate you're anticipating.

Sorry, but I think your chances of funding a new oak floor off the back of the old pine one is about as likely as finding a leprechauns horde under those old boards.

 

[lifebeginsat40]

So to answer a few if the things that have come up...

The house isn't quite a shell but it's not far off. No skirting to worry about, only one non-brick partition wall so not many boards lost there (if any tbh) and we've had a fair few boards up already so no huge issues there.

We've taken boards from the bathroom but unfortunately only half the room was left with original boards and a good number of them had bad water damage meaning they had to be cut down. So not quite enough for our needs.

Storage isn't a huge issue, we have a few spare rooms indoors that are kept nice and dry. The hope though is to sell it all as one though I take your point about it being difficult to find anyone willing to take them in one go. When you say trade would only pay scrap price for them what do you think that would be, roughly? Even covering a fraction of a new floor would be a positive for us.

 

[Cubist]

No idea in truth but I wouldn't be surprised for some/most of them to ask You to pay them to take them away citing transport, labour, etc. etc

 

[Coles]

So I'm in the process of restoring my 1910 pine floors, and while having a nightmare of a time finding real reclaimed pine (and not just recut scaff boards!) I had a thought. How feasible is it to sell my old pine floor to fund a new oak one?

I can buy new character grade oak boards for around £70sqm and I've seen people selling real old pine around the same price or more. Plus I'd be saving money on buying replacement boards myself as well as on renting the floor sanding kit I'd need to do the job.

So anyone want to bring me back down to earth and tell me why this couldn't be done?

I dont know where you are but Toby Newell recommended Dulwich reclamation for genuine victorian boards. He has them in stock at £40 m2.

I have found the going rate is £40-45 m2 for reclaimed pine.