Today was fun. We had the privilege of going to see the inter-workings of Olde Savannah Flooring. William(Bill) Riley gave us a tour today of their facilities and it was nothing short of spectacular.
A few weeks ago, going through my files of torn out magazine pictures, I stumbled upon an ad from Olde Savannah Flooring that ran in Southern Accents magazine(R.I.P. SA, sniff, sniff). It is a lovely picture and I remember calling and asking what the floors were a few years back. They were an antique oak and just lovely in the ad.
I called and after asking one too many questions, was transferred to “Bill” to “help” me. He got on the phone and asked me where the house is and I told him in Duluth, near the Forum and Wesleyan and I asked did he know where that is. He replied that he did and he continued with telling me his daughter, Irleand, goes to Wesleyan! OMG! Our kids go to Wesleyan! I knew this was going to be good.
I told Bill about the house and he encouraged David and I to come to the warehouse and he could show us what they can do with hardwood floors. He also explained to me that they do not use polyurethane on their floors, never have, and that explained why I kept seeing floors that were of the right species but didn’t look like the one in the ad. They either use wax or tung oil on their floors to finish them. Now, it started to make sense why we couldn’t figure out why the samples from our builder did not match the one we had seen at an Interior Design shop.
Well, today we finally got to go see Bill and his flooring and it was a really fun experience.
He took us around and showed us different flooring- walnut is their most popular choice and the floor that we are going to use, hickory. It comes to him from Kentucky. We are going to go with a random width floor and the basic will be 3, 4 and 5 inch but many times, it comes in with widths up to 10 inches and ‘you get what you get’ as Audrey would say.
From here, they cut and saw until you end up with the boards that you can then choose to have hand-scraped to add extra texture and character. Here is a picture of that labor intensive process:
Hand scraping
These are actually hickory stair treads that are headed to Florida. You can see how long this process would take!
Custom Stain Room
Then, there is the custom stain room. If you have a color or picture or specific color in mind, these guys can make it happen.
Above, is the sample board that we liked. They are going to make up a couple of sample boards and we will go from there!
It was a fun morning and a big thanks to Bill and Mark for showing us around! If you are in the market for flooring or are thinking about updating, I would seriously consider Olde Savannah Flooring! www.oldesavannahflooring.com
Lastly, he told us that they just did Taylor Swift’s house and I figure it it’s good enough for Taylor…
Riverview Redo 
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