Hull Forest Products of Pomfret, Connecticut, has been making traditional wide plank wood flooring since the family sawmill got its start in New England over 54 years ago. The company began as a tiny backyard mill and evolved to become the largest sawmill in Connecticut, manufacturing over 10 million board feet of forest products each year.
View of the Hull Forest Products sawmill today, located in Pomfret, CT.
Today thousands of homes and buildings in New England and beyond, including storied institutions like Yale and Harvard, feature custom wide plank wood flooring from this third generation family-run sawmill.
Hull Forest Products made custom wide plank wood floors for Yale University’s newest residential colleges, including flooring for the head of college houses. Photo credit: Otto/Pete Aaron for RAMSA Architects.
Wide Plank Wood Flooring Made With Sustainable Local Timber
Made with sustainable local timber coming from family forests in New England, Hull wide plank wood flooring adds beauty to your home and gives you the satisfaction of knowing where your wood comes from. The woodland management division of Hull Forest Products stewards over 50,000 acres of New England forests, providing long-term forest management to landowners and helping them keep their forests as forests.
Hull Forest Products has earned an Environmental Merit Award from the EPA for its role in helping to conserve the region’s working woodlands. When you choose a Hull wood floor, you are helping to conserve forests in the United States.
Dormitories and common areas at Yale’s Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray colleges feature Hull Forest Products flooring. Photo credit: Otto/Pete Aaron for RAMSA Architects.
Hull Forest Products specializes in long and wide plank wood floors and custom matching stair components – all products are made to last for generations, and customers receive a lifetime quality guarantee. Wood products are sold mill-direct to the public with nationwide shipping.
Hull Forest Products made custom Red Oak rift and quartersawn wood flooring for the new Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin residential colleges at Yale University in New Haven. Photo copyright Peter Aaron/Otto for Robert A.M. Stern Architects.
When Yale University new residential colleges architect Robert A.M. Stern specified rift and quartersawn Red Oak floors from Yale’s own university forests, Hull Forest Products made that dream a reality.
Dorm rooms at Yale’s new residential colleges feature Hull Forest Products flooring! Photo credit: Peter Aaron/Otto for RAMSA Architects.
As a woodland management service and a sawmill, Hull Forest Products was able to plan and undertake a timber harvest in Yale’s CT forest. Together with Red Oak logs from Yale’s NH forest, this timber became the stock for the flooring. Hull Forest Products trucked the logs to its Pomfret, CT sawmill, sawed them on its band saw, then air and kiln dried the lumber before custom milling it into the 5 inch wide solid Red Oak plank flooring that now graces the Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray Colleges. This wood helped increase the percentage of locally sourced materials used in the project, helping it earn Gold LEED certification.
Wood flooring was used throughout the common areas of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin Colleges, including the head of college houses.
Sustainably harvested rift and quartersawn Red Oak from Yale’s own forests was used throughout the project, including flooring for the head of college houses. Photo credit: Peter Aaron/Otto for RAMSA Architects.Project: Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College Architect: Robert A.M. Stern Architects; RAMSA Location: New Haven, CT.
Project: Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College Architect: Robert A.M. Stern Architects; RAMSA Location: New Haven, CT.
In addition to manufacturing wood flooring, Hull Forest Products stewards over 50,000 acres of working forests in New England, helping to keep these forests as forests. Hull Forest Products has earned an Environmental Merit award from the EPA for its role in conserving forestland in New England.
For more info on our products and services, visit hullforest.com or contact us at 1-800-928-9602.
Live sawn wood floors are sawn straight off the log, allowing for wide planks with a variety of grain patterns.
Live sawn White Oak floors are a customer favorite, with good reason. This type of wide plank wood flooring has beautiful and unique grain, is extremely durable, and offers excellent value. Read on to learn more of what’s to love about the live sawn cut:
1. Live sawing is a traditional method of sawing wood flooring that creates a beautiful grain pattern.
Live sawn White Oak floors are also known as “European center cut floors” or “French Oak floors” because this saw cut was popular in the old world. The saw passes straight through the log from the outside diameter through the heart, creating the widest possible boards and utilizing as much of each log as possible.
An oak log sits on deck at the Hull Forest Products sawmill in Connecticut. When we are making live sawn wood floors, our band mill makes a series of straight cuts all the way through the log.
Because each live sawn plank contains a mix of clear and natural grade wood, the flooring is an accurate representation of the inside of each individual tree. Wide live sawn planks include some of each of the grain styles: rift sawn, quarter sawn, and plain (also known as flat) sawn.
Illustration 1: This graphic demonstrates the different types of saw cuts and the resulting grain pattern of the boards.
2. Live sawn wood flooring is an extremely durable wide plank flooring choice.
Live sawn planks contain both radial grain (grain that runs perpendicular to the growth rings) and tangential grain (grain that runs parallel to the growth rings). This grain mix makes live sawn boards very stable – even at wider plank widths. We dry the floor boards carefully and mill the backs with stress relief to prevent cupping. As a result, we confidently offer our live sawn White Oak solid wood flooring in widths up to 14 inches.
3. Live Sawn White Oak floors are environmentally friendly.
The live sawn cut offers the best resource utilization of all the saw cuts. It conserves the majority of the log with very little waste. Superior resource utilization is one reason why this cut was so popular in the old days. Waste not, want not.
4. Live sawn White Oak wood floors work with modern and traditional interiors.
Live sawn White Oak wood flooring in a new timber frame home.
Live sawn White Oak floors offer one of the best values in wide plank flooring. They are an affordable luxury compared to their close cousins, rift and quarter sawn floors. (Rift and quartersawn floors result in a higher waste factor so they are more expensive.) Live sawn floors offer a very wide plank floor with the stability of quarter and rift sawn floors at a fraction of the price.
Wide plank wood flooring in the kitchen? Yes. Wood adds a warm and organic element to what is often the most modern room in the house. Wood also contrasts well with sleek or metal kitchen surfaces. On trend for 2018, more homeowners are choosing to add wide plank flooring as a way to put their unique imprint on kitchen remodels.
Here are a few examples of kitchens that created one-of-a-kind looks with our custom wide plank wood flooring:
Our select grade American Cherry wide plank wood flooring brings color to a white kitchen.
Imagine the white kitchen above with a more neutral color floor – without the reddish floor, this room would have a totally different look. The rich red hue of the American Cherry plank flooring really warms up this kitchen’s color palette.
Our premium grade American Hickory wood flooring with grain and color variation enlivens an all white kitchen.
The wide plank hickory floor in the modern Boston kitchen shown above also adds warmth and interest to an all white kitchen, but in a very different way. In this case, the wood character and the color variation between hickory’s pale sapwood and darker brown heartwood create the wow factor.
Our Curly Birch wide plank flooring in a coastal kitchen, Newport Beach, California.
Another white kitchen, the California example (shown above) used figured Birch wood flooring to create a unique and contrasting interior.
Also be sure to check out more examples below from our Houzz profile. Hull Forest Products was voted Best of Houzz again – for 2018. This makes seven awards in a row now because our floors and and customer service are so popular with users.
Comfortable as your favorite blue jeans, you’ll love our rift and quartersawn White Oak floors. This photo is from a customer home in East Hampton, New York. The stain used on the floor was a Minwax blend – 6 Golden Oak to 1 Honey.
For those of you interested in quarter and/or rift sawn wood floors, we’ve put together this post to show off some of the quarter and rift sawn wood floors we’ve made for clients lately.
White Oak select grade quarter and rift sawn custom wood flooring we made for a beach home in Key West, Florida. This floor has a clear poly finish.
We are always happy to send samples of our wood floors, but sometimes it’s hard to tell from a single board how that look will translate across an entire room. We find nothing helps people make up their mind about a floor more than seeing finished room-setting photos. [Note: If you have installed our wood flooring, we encourage you to send us a photo!]
Our rift and quartersawn select grade White Oak flooring in a Greenwich Village apartment, featured in Dwell Magazine.
There is something very classic and comfortable about rift and quartersawn White Oak that makes it work with many decorative styles, from minimalist (as show in the Greenwich Village studio (above) to this more traditional Long Island home (below).
Our select grade 8″ wide quartersawn White Oak floorboards in a Setauket, Long Island home. This floor has a light brown stain and a Sutherland Welles Murdoch tung oil finish.
At our sawmill, when we quarter and rift saw a log for flooring, we first quarter the log, then we slice into it, as show in second and third images of the diagram below.
Exhibit 1: Types of saw cuts and the look of the grain that is revealed on the face of the boards. Notice that the live sawn cut, which cuts straight through the log, contains all three grain types.
As a result, the radial and vertical grain of the wood is revealed instead of the tangential grain. The rippled figure and flecks of medullary rays that you see in quarter sawn wood (second image from the left in Exhibit 1, above) are highlighted when the wood is cut this way. These ribbon-like cellular structures run perpendicular to the growth rings, and they are responsible for transporting nutrients to the tree via sap.
Close-up view of our quarter and rift sawn blend wood flooring, select grade, with medullary rays visible at top and bottom and rift sawn grain visible in the center.
In contrast, the rift sawn cut delivers grain with a very straight, uniform appearance and none of the wavy fleck, as shown in the photo below.
Rift sawn select grade White Oak has grain that is mostly straight and uniform, with none of the wavy fleck.
We can make you with a floor that is all quarter sawn grain, all rift sawn grain, or a blend of the two, which is a very popular look. One of the benefits of quarter and rift sawn wood, besides the different grain pattern, is extreme dimensional stability. This makes quarter and rift sawn wood floors ideal for demanding installations, such as over radiant heat.
This Gramecery Park apartment features our rift/quarter sawn select grade wood floors, darkened with a Jacobean stain.Upper East Side apartment with our rift and quartersawn select White Oak flooring.
Another way to change up the look of a quarter and rift sawn wood floor is to use a grade with character markings like the floor shown below.
Rift and quartersawn White Oak with knots, character markings, and skip planing has a vintage look and feel.
Visit our White Oak gallery and click on any photo to get specification and pricing information for any of our floors. Have questions about our floors? Give us a call 1-800-928-9602.
Seniors from Pomfret School’s Environmental Studies class tour Hull Forest Products.
Each year hundreds of students from local elementary schools, high schools, and colleges tour the Hull Forest Products sawmill in Pomfret, CT to learn about forestry and wood products manufacturing. 2017 school groups included students from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Burrillville High School in Rhode Island, and the advanced environmental studies class from nearby Pomfret Preparatory School, where teacher Annie O’Sullivan has been bringing her students to the Hull sawmill for several years now. We asked Ms. O’Sullivan to describe what role Hull Forest Products plays in her students’ learning:
“Our students have had a fantastic time touring Hull each fall for the past couple of years. I first took a tour as a grad school at Yale Forestry, so was eager to connect once I started working at Pomfret. In the fall we have a unit on Forest Ecology, so the students spend time in the Pomfret [School] forest learning their trees and about forest ecosystems in general. They then learn a bit about forestry management and why landowners might cut trees to encourage growth.
I have them think about where their wood products come from (they don’t know, except from Ikea), so that’s why we take the trip to Hull Forest Products. It’s there that the students really grasp for the first time how this natural resource they are so familiar with (red oaks) are turned into the flooring we see towards the end of the tour. They are usually pretty into the debarker and seeing the saws operating with the lasers.
My course is really about educating students about sustainability. Thus, I am trying to get them to understand that we use natural resources like water and food and trees, and that’s okay – being an environmentalist is not about rejecting all commodities. It’s really about how we grow and use them that determines what our future will look like. Hull is an amazing place for the kids to see that process right in front of their eyes.”
Burrillville High School students tour an active timber harvest with Hull forester Chris Casadei to learn how and why woodlands are managed.
In the fall of 2017 students from Burrillville High School had the opportunity to tour an active timber harvest with Hull forester Chris Casadei, seeing how and why particular trees are marked for harvest. The students also toured the Hull sawmill to observe the manufacture of forest products from local logs. Students were able to see the entire process – forests being managed sustainably for the production of timber, the breaking down of logs on on a band head rig, the flow of boards through the sawmill and its dry kilns, and even the secondary manufacturing of flooring from some of this lumber.
Students tour the wood flooring shop at Hull Forest Products to watch as lumber is turned into custom wide plank wood flooring.
Public outreach is an important part of every forester’s job – and we encourage our entire team to help educate the public about the vital role that forests ad forest products play in our ecosystem and economy.
Want to learn more? You can visit Hull Forest Products at these upcoming events:
March 17, 2018: Connecticut Land Conservation Conference, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
March 22-25: Architectural Digest Home Design Show, Pier 94, NYC
March 23-24: JLC Show, Providence, RI Convention Center
March 27-29: New England Society of American Foresters winter meeting, Nashua, NH: New England Forest Stories – The People – The Management – The Technical Knowledge
July 10-12: NWFA Intermediate Wood Flooring Installation, NYC
Clients came to architects David Burdett and Stefanie Werner of DAS Studio in NYC with a design dilemma: their lakefront house did not take advantage of the property’s views. And the building was divided into many small rooms, creating awkward spaces that were not functional for contemporary living. The clients wanted a clean, light, and modern aesthetic, but they also wanted to pay tribute to their home’s rural setting and past.
The solution that DAS crafted involved gutting the house to create new, larger interior spaces that maximized the lake views. To honor the homeowner’s modern aesthetic while simultaneously acknowledging the home’s rural location, they came up with the idea to use a very traditional wood floor, wide plank pine flooring, but to finish the floor with a white stain for a light, clean, modern look. The homeowners, who were both actively involved in researching and selecting the products used in their home, turned to a local sawmill, Hull Forest Products in Pomfret, Connecticut, to make their wood floors. Hull Forest Products, which ships its floors mill-direct nationwide, was able to supply wide pine floors up to 19 inches wide with plank lengths of 12+ feet.
To achieve the look shown above, the floor was stained with one coat of Duraseal Country White. Then the floor was lightly buffed and sanded, and another coat of Country White was applied. The floor was then finished with four coats of Duraseal Traffic water based poly, satin finish. The grain pattern of the pine floors and the white coloring were a perfect match to the project’s design criteria.
To link the three floors of the house functionally and aesthetically, the homeowners commissioned custom thick stair treads from Hull Forest Products, who made them from the same wood used on the floors. The stair treads are a perfect match for the floors, and they create a seamless flow between the home’s three levels. The stairs function as a bridge between floors and time periods, for, as Burdett points out, “the stair design contrasts the chunky heaviness of the solid wood treads with the slender detailing of the [modern] steel stringers and balustrade.”
The completed house, with work done by West Mountain Builders of Washington, Connecticut, displays the successfully executed design and vision in every photo. As Burdett says, “It is a contemporary renovation of an older house, working with existing proportions and heights to achieve a contemporary living space that is respectful of the original house.” The home is a poster child for how to reconfigure an old house to be a gracious and suitable host for a whole new generation.
Resources:
Custom wide plank floors and stairs by Hull Forest Products, CT, www.hullforest.com
Design by DAS Studio, David Burdett and Stefanie Werner, www.das-studio.us
Hull Forest Products, the largest sawmill in the metro NYC and metro Boston area, as well as New England’s biggest producer of White Oak products, is hosting a series of FREE and FUN events during the month of October that highlight the value of local working forests and the forest economy. Open to the public, these events are designed to foster a greater connection between people and forests, and we hope you can attend!
Sawmill Tour at Hull Forest Products October 7th – Pomfret, CT
A fascinating behind-the-scenes “how it’s made” tour of a modern sawmill facility – watch as we turn raw timber into finished forest products. Learn how sustainably harvested local wood is milled into lumber, flooring, post and beam timbers, and more. A must for builders, architects, contractors, and designers. Also recommended for families or anyone curious about how wood products are made. Tours are an easy .4 mile walk and take approximately 90 minutes. Tours will be offered on a drop-in basis from 8am – 2pm. Please note that this event was listed incorrectly in TLGV’s Walktober Guide. It is being held on Saturday October 7th.
Date: Saturday October 7, 2017 8am-2pm
Location: 101 Hampton Road (Route 97) Pomfret Center, CT 06259
Woods Walk #1: The Man Behind the Yale University Forests October 15 – Union, CT
Participants walk a woods road during a guided tour of the Myers Pond Forest, Union, CT.
Join us Sunday October 15th for a 2-hour 2-mile guided walk of Hull Forestlands’ Myers Pond Forest, formerly the summer home of Yale University Forest founder George Hewitt Myers. Walk participants will learn about changes in the land over time since the days of the Nipmuck Indians, early farming in the area, and the man behind the Yale Forests, who worked to create this most remote of Connecticut’s forested areas. Walkers will tour the site of the Myers family summer home and cemetery. This tour also showcases sustainable forestry and the ways in which woodland management can improve and diversify bird habitat. Leashed dogs are welcome to accompany hikers on this walk.
Date: Sunday October 15 1:30 pm (raindate October 22 at 1:30 pm)
Location: 159 Kinney Hollow Road, Union, CT. Look for the Hull Forestlands sign.
Contact: Hull forester Michael Bartlett (860) 377-0117
A 2-hour 1.5- mile guided tour over moderate terrain at the Westridge Farm Forest and the neighboring Pachaug State Forest. Led by foresters from both Hull Forest Products and the state of CT, participants will view and discuss recent woodland management activities, see beautiful old stone walls, and then cross into adjacent Pachaug State Forest to visit cultural artifacts including an old shingle mill site.
Date: October 21st 10 am (rain date is October 28th at 10 am)
Location: 611 Wyassup Road, North Stonington, CT
Contact: Hull forester Chris Casadei (860) 235-6550
Woods Walk #3: Historic Steerage Rock October 22 -Brimfield, MA
On this 2-hour guided woods walk you will learn about historic Steerage Rock, once a favored camping site of King Philip, son of Massasoit, and a landmark on the old Indian trail that later became known as the Bay Path, which served as a landmark for the pioneer settlers of the Connecticut Valley. Participants will view actively managed woodland and enjoy a vista of Brimfield Common as well as a view of the path of destruction left by the the 2011 tornado. Bring binoculars. Leashed dogs are welcome.
Date: October 22 1:30-3:30 pm, rain or shine
Location: Steerage Rock Road, across from 1 Harnois Lane, Brimfield, MA
Contact: Hull forester Mike Bartlett (860) 377-0117
Woods Walk #4: Enhancing Wildlife Habitat, Improving Forest Health, and Creating New Opportunities at Worcester County’s Camp Marshall 4-H Center – October 28 – Spencer, MA
Join us for a guided woods tour over moderate rolling terrain to view and discuss recent woodland management activities on the 100-acre working forest at Worcester County’s Camp Marshall 4-H Center. Participants will walk new recreational trails created during a 2017 timber harvest and observe enhanced wildlife habitat, a young hard maple stand that will serve as a future sugarbush for the camp, areas where stump grinding has been completed to reclaim old fields, and areas that were once pasture land that have since converted back to woodland.
Sabine Schoenberg of This New House chats with Hull Forest Products floor salesman Greg Anderson.
February 2016 – Hull Forest Products is excited to announce it is a project partner with Sabine’s New House (SNH) and will be supplying wood flooring for the SNH’s Greenwich House!
Sabine H. Schoenberg, founder of SNH, was looking for healthy, sustainable wood flooring that would also be good for the indoor air quality in the home, so she turned to Connecticut’s largest sawmill, Hull Forest Products, known for its forest-to-floor wood flooring.
A family business since 1965, Hull Forest Products utilizes locally grown and sustainably harvested wood to mill custom-made wide and long plank flooring. Hull Forest Products ships its floors nationwide, making it the mill-direct wood flooring source for metro NYC and beyond.
Looking for a modern kitchen that’s also cozy ? Consider adding wood flooring. For a primer on how to warm up an industrial space with warm wood tones, check out this white kitchen in Boston’s South End. The cooler elements (white brick, white macaubus quartzite, white cabinets) juxtapose with the warm variegation of the Hickory wide plank floors, upping the cozy factor. The copper faucet and pot rail add another warm element.
The homeowners chose the Hickory wood floor because its character and color added a rustic element to their space. They also wanted a durable wood that would hold up well for their family, which includes two dogs. Photo by Matt Delphenich Architectural Photography.
Chris Greenawalt of Bunker Workshop in Charlestown, MA, transformed the space’s quirks, including an old pizza oven and a triangular shaped alcove, into functional shelving (made from leftover hickory flooring) and extra storage space. With no upper cabinets, the space is open and filled with natural light.
American Hickory wood flooring with grain and color variation contrasts beautifully with the white elements, adding warmth and life. Photo by Matt Delphenich Architectural Photography.
The homeowners used Hickory flooring throughout to add a warm lived-in feel to an otherwise industrial and modern space and help pull the look together. The warm toned wood continues up the stairs with modern square edge and square ended Hickory treads and risers laid over white painted wood. The high color contrast between the light sapwood and the darker heartwood in the Hickory flooring and stairs adds texture and warmth–like a cozy blanket–preventing the space from feeling stark.
Hickory stair treads and risers with square edges and ends make a decidedly modern profile. Applied over a white background, they draw the eye up. Photo by Matt Delphenich Architectural Photography.
The original stairway in the home was traditional, and the homeowners wanted to modernize it, but due to building codes, they could not change the footprint of the original steps. Together with their c0ntractor, Michel Beaudry, and their architect, Bunker Workshop, they devised a zig-zag pattern that ensured each tread was the same size as it had been previously, but with a modern line and no overhanging nosing. Hull Forest Products custom milled the Hickory treads and risers to their specifications.
The homeowners wanted to source their floors locally, which led to their decision to choose Hull Forest Products, the largest sawmill in the greater Boston area, and a producer of custom-milled wide plank floors and stairs from local wood. “We absolutely love our floors,” say the homeowners, who completed their home renovation in 2014. “Their character is one of the favorite characteristics of our home.”
The wood flooring and stair parts shown in the photos above are Hull Forest Products’s natural grade Hickory, with knots and color variation, finished with a water based poly. No stain was used. Some of the knots were defected out by the installer to create a cleaner look that is closer to a premium rather than a natural grade floor.
