Reclaimed lumber, like many things of real beauty and value, does come with a price. You're looking at buying the Mercedes of floors here, after all, not the Yugo. The costs to recover and prepare the reclaimed lumber are generally not cheap for the suppliers, and these costs are always passed down to the customer in the cost of their wooden flooring. When harvested from old buildings such as homes or barns, the buildings must be meticulously de-constructed in a manner that will preserve the reclaimed wood and protect it from damage. Once these old buildings are de-constructed, the reclaimed wood begins a long journey of being prepared, transported, and transformed before it ends up in your home as wooden flooring. You can see where, compared to traditional wooden flooring, reclaimed wooden floors, while great for the environment in comparison, certainly take a lot more work than cutting down the tree and running it through a saw mill.
Embedded materials such as nails, rocks, and building hardware from the lumber's previous home have to be very carefully identified and removed in the initial steps so as not to damage the saws and other equipment that will be used in shaping the reclaimed wood. This is a tedious process, and although it addresses some of the character marks that make reclaimed wood so bought after as they embody the timelessness that is so endearing about reclaimed wooden flooring, there is often a limit to just how much character any piece of lumber should have before it's just plain trash. Sometimes this limit is obvious, but sometimes there is a system of grading where the customer has set a particular limit on how many flaws the lumber should have. When buying reclaimed lumber, suppliers will often focus on grain quality and species, which means that obtaining the highest possible yield from each batch of reclaimed wood is an absolute necessity. As much as 50% of reclaimed wood might go to waste in the production of high quality reclaimed wood products. Half is a lot, to be sure, but as technology and demand increases, this number should improve. Also consider that half of something is a lot more than nothing at all.
Wood is everywhere. It's in the forests and parks, obviously, but it's also cradling our books, computers, and even our selves when we sit in our sofas and chairs. The world economy, however, is based on high speed delivery and mass production, which, in the end, dictates the prices of everything, even something like reclaimed lumber that is obviously better with time. Like organic food and other sustainable lifestyle items, reclaimed wooden flooring and other products made from recycled antique wood will cost you a little more. Mass production does tend to drive the final price down, and that's obviously not an option when it comes to reclaiming our or nature's wasted building materials. However, to many it is worth it as you're gaining not only an awesome wooden floor, but one made of material durable enough to justify its cost. While reclaimed wooden flooring is not for everyone, it would behoove you to at least give it a look, especially if you're planning to build or rebuild an environmentally friendly home with wooden floors .