Hull Forest Products, New England’s biggest producer of White Oak products, is hosting a series of fun and free events during the month of October that highlight the value of local working forests and the forest economy. Free and open to the public, these events invite the public to view and discuss woodland management activities and learn how sustainably harvested local wood is turned into finished wood products.
Hull Forest Products sawmill, Pomfret, Connecticut.
A fascinating behind-the-scenes “how it’s made” tour of a modern sawmill facility – watch as we turn timber into lumber before your eyes. Learn how sustainably harvested local wood is milled into lumber, flooring, post and beam timbers, railroad ties, and more. Tours are an easy .4 mile walk and take approximately 90 minutes. Tours will be offered on a drop-in basis from 8am – 2pm. Bring the whole family! 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
Contact: (860) 974-0127 or info@hullforest.com
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
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
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.
Date: Saturday October 28 9am rain or shine
Location: 92 McCormick Road, Spencer, MA
Contact: Hull forester Ross Hubacz (860) 576-1546
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
Construction by West Mountain Builders, Washington, CT
Photos by Michael Bowman Photography, CT
Hull Forest Products is excited to be a project partner with The Last Green Valley, helping to accelerate the pace of woodland conservation in the Southern New England Heritage Forest! Through a grant from the USDA, our forestry division will be providing practical advice to more woodland owners & helping them create management plans for their #workingforests. Local wood=Local good. Working forests help clean our air and water, offer wildlife habitat, sequester carbon, and provide a renewable source of wood.
Looking for a modern kitchen that’s also cozy? 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.
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.
Natural 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.
This apartment has been featured in The Boston Globe, Apartment Therapy, and The Anatomy of Design.
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 This New House (TNH) and will be supplying wood flooring for the TNH’s Greenwich House!
Sabine H. Schoenberg, founder of TNH, 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.
Frye Boot’s Manhattan flagship store used ten inch wide floor planks of natural White Oak from Hull Forest Products.
If you have visited Frye Boot’s Manhattan or Boston stores, then you have stood on Hull wide plank Oak flooring. Frye Boot, the oldest continually operated shoe brand in the United States, wanted the design and visual merchandising of its stores to reference their long history of shoemaking, so they turned to “raw” ingredients like wood, leather, and metal to convey the company’s brand heritage.
Hull Forest Products provided ten inch wide live sawn solid White Oak flooring for the New York store and eight inch wide live sawn White Oak flooring for the Boston location.
Both floors are rustic grade, with occasional knots and character markings, and both were given a dark multi-tonal stain to help create the “vintage workshop” feel envisioned by the Frye’s design team.
Scarlet Tanager, photographed at Hull’s Myers Pond Forest in Union, CT, a mixed deciduous forest interspersed with hemlocks and pines. Photo courtesy of Patrick Comins, Director of Bird Conservation/Audubon Connecticut.
Union, Connecticut– In the summer of 2014, biologists from Audubon Connecticut and scientists from the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station teamed up to conduct bird habitat assessments on privately owned woodlands across the state, with the goal of helping landowners take steps to enhance bird habitat in their forests. Connecticut has faced forest fragmentation and an ensuing loss of variety in bird habitats, but intensively managed working woodlands can provide a range of critical habitats, from the unfragmented interior forest habitat favored by neotropical migrating birds like the Scarlet Tanager, pictured above, to the early successional habitat favored by shrubland and grassland birds.
Among the woodlands assessed was the Myers Pond Forest in Union, a 450-acre woodland owned by Hull Forestlands and managed by Hull Forest Products, a CT sawmill and woodland management service. Permanently protected with a conservation easement held by the Nature Conservancy, Hull’s Myers Pond Forest is surrounded by the 8,000 acre Yale University Forest, creating a large tract of contiguous woodland. The property has been formally managed for timber production for over a century, and most recently has undergone harvests to remove diseased Hemlock and promote White Pine regeneration.
View of Myers Pond and fall foliage at Hull Forestland’s Myers Pond Forest. The woodland has been formally managed for timber production since 1900 and provides a wide range of bird habitat, including sedge/tussock, meadow, open water, riparian, and upland habitat types.
Patrick Comins, Director of Bird Conservation at Audubon Connecticut, was impressed with the quality of the bird habitat at the Myers Pond Forest as well as the way in which Hull’s forest management activities had led to forest regeneration. He hailed the property as “truly one of the crown jewels of forestland in Connecticut.” Jeffrey Ward, Chief Scientist at the Dept. of Forestry and Horticulture at the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment station, declared the Myers Pond Forest the “best managed property he had seen” so far in their bird habitat assessments, which included over 25 properties in Connecticut.
In southern New England, residential development and suburbanization have contributed to forest fragmentation, and as forest parcels grow smaller and smaller, they provide less viable habitat for birds. Smaller parcels also make it more difficult to practice forest management, and as a result, there is less variety of bird habitat. In contrast, when timber harvests are periodically conducted as part of a forest management plan, they create temporary openings in the woods that quickly regenerate to shrubbery, then young forest, eventually growing into mature forest, and they provide a variety of bird habitats in the process.
Hull Forestlands and Hull Forest Products are proud of their role in contributing critical habitat to Connecticut’s birds and grateful that Audubon Connecticut was able to perform the assessments and provide feedback for landowners.
Wide plank figured Birch wood flooring from Hull Forest Products.
Pomfret, CT, February 4, 2014 – Hull Forest Products has been awarded a “Best Of Houzz” design award by Houzz.com, the leading platform for home remodeling and design. The family-run forestry service, sawmill, and wide plank flooring manufacturer was chosen by the more than 16 million monthly users who comprise the Houzz community. This award goes to those whose work was the most popular among Houzz users, who saved more than 230 million professional images of home interiors and exteriors to their personal ideabooks via the Houzz site, and ipad/iphone/android apps.
“We work hard to make wood floors like no one else, and we are thrilled that our American-grown and manufactured wide plank floors have been so popular with the Houzz community,” said Mary Hull, co-owner of Hull Forest Products. “People feel good about choosing our floors because they are beautiful, durable, and sustainably grown products whose use helps protect working forests here in the United States.”
With Houzz, homeowners can identify top-rated products like Hull Forest Products’s wide plank floors and find companies whose work matches their own aspirations for their home. Homeowners can also evaluate professionals by contacting them directly on the Houzz platform, asking questions about their work and reviewing their responses to questions from others in the Houzz community.
Follow Hull Forest Products on Houzz: http://www.houzz.com/pro/hullforest01/hull-forest-products
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White Oak kitchen flooring in a western Connecticut home. The homeowners wanted to incorporate as many local materials as possible when building their home, so they chose Hull Forest Products, CT's largest sawmill, as their wood floor supplier.
Hull Forest Products in Pomfret, Connecticut, is the state’s largest sawmill and has been offering its CT grown wide plank wood flooring mill-direct to homeowners since 1965.
Connecticut is one of the most heavily forested states in New England, with over 60 percent forest cover, yet the majority of the forest products grown in Connecticut are sent out of state. If you are looking for CT hardwood flooring or pine flooring, why import a wood floor from halfway around the world when you can buy local and save money and the local environment in the process?
In 2011 Hull Forest Products joined the Connecticut Department of Agriculture’s Connecticut Grown program, which identifies local producers of forest products and helps connect them with CT homeowners and builders who are looking for local mill-direct wood flooring, paneling, and millwork.
The Connecticut Grown logo helps consumers connect with local producers of wood flooring such as Hull Forest Products, a family-run sawmill crafting affordable wide plank wood flooring since 1965.
If helping the local environment and saving money are not reason enough for you to choose Hull Forest Products as your Connecticut wood flooring supplier, consider these reasons as well: 10 Reasons to Choose Hull Forest Products.
Read Reviews from Hull Forest Products Flooring Customers
