Tuscan Floors

BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – BLUEPRINT HOME DESIGN CONSULTANTS

TUSCANY HOME DESIGNS

TUSCANY FLOORS

Masonry

Terracotta

	Varying sizes overall and shape
	May be patterned
	Preferably handmade
	Thin grout lines

Brick, pavers, cobble

	Rough and laid tight
	May be patterned
	Much to be preferred in handmade

Brick field with terracotta tile trim –

To floor at perimeters

To wall as baseboard

Wood floor decoration could involve

The less pricey and more widely embraced marquetry or

The more expensive and less popular intarsia

Wood plank

Various widths (including wide as they come) and lengths, nailed

Worn

Slightly uneven, not smooth

Square-cut

Not micro-mitered

Not micro-chamfered

Not v-grooved

Not laminate

Not tongue-and-groove

Specie, native (no particular order to the list below plus many other lesser populations especially of hardwoods, notably including ash)

Cyprus

European Chestnut

Elm

Holm, or Holly, Oak - a White Oak

Pine – Mediterranean, Umbrella, European Black, and Aleppo

Beech

An unusual wood plank floor application methodology is offered (ibid., p.47)

Where to buy hardwood floors: If you’re looking to complete your hardwood flooring project you should consider Floor & Décor Outlets. They offer wood flooring including bamboo, walnut, oak, and all types of engineered or prefinished wood floors at wholesale pricing.

Comment: In traditional Italian farmhouses, the wooden floor planks were nailed directly to the beams supporting the ceiling below (see Building Notes: Floors, page 49). Although almost no one nails down floorboards directly to the supporting beams anymore, there is a springiness to nailed floors that is hard to give up. [Designers confirm an unusual and distinctive feel in their saving of a very old home from the ‘dozer, which home had several rooms’ hard-as-rock Yellow Pine floors nailed to handcut floor joists.) To achieve this look, smaller sticks of wood [designers reckon these sticks are akin to conventional lath] are set into a thin layer of concrete [designers reckon that the setting-in-concrete achieved some but not all the takeup of the lathing depth, thereby leaving just a little open space twixt plank bottom of face and thin-coat concrete or similar’s top of face for lateral deflection on live loading], about a foot (30 cm) apart. The wooden floor planks are than laid atop these sticks and nailed in place. This method has all the charm of the traditional method – such as squeaking, springing under the feet, and general old-fashioned feeling. Yet it does away with the disadvantages of light and dirt going through the cracks.

Tuscany Style ‘carpet’ is correctly area rug above solid-surface finish flooring

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