Official Blog | Hull Forest Products

Why Plank Length Matters in Wood Flooring

Our floor salesman, Greg Anderson, stands 6′ 5″ but is dwarfed by this very long eastern white pine floor plank.

The lengths of the floor boards you choose for your room will have a big impact on the overall look of your floor. Longer plank lengths create a clean visual line because there are fewer end or butt seams/joints (places where the ends of the boards butt up against each other). In fact, depending on the dimensions of your room, you might be able to eliminate butt seams all together by using long planks. We frequently get requests from clients looking for long planks in order to avoid butt joints on their floor.

Figure 1: Wide and long board red oak flooring brings a sense of history to this reproduction colonial home. (Hull Forest Products Red Oak, floor #359). Longer planks create a cleaner visual line with fewer butt seams.

In contrast, using shorter planks will result in more end seams on your floor, and if you go with especially short boards, you will get a patchwork effect. See figure 2, below:

Figure 2: Using shorter plank lengths (the ones shown are around one to two feet long) results in a patchwork effect. If this is not the look you are going for, you should consider longer planks.

At Hull Forest Products we offer two plank length classes: long and extra long. Long is our standard length class, which features much longer average plank lengths than other manufacturers (generally 3 to 8 feet long), but at the most budget friendly price. Extra long (generally 4 to 10+feet with a 7 foot+ average plank length) is for those who want an extra luxurious long and wide plank floor.

To get long and extra long plank lengths, we have to start with very high quality timber so we can saw it full length off the log without having to cut around defects. Most wood floors out there today feature shorter plank lengths because they are made by cutting around defects in lower quality wood.

Long and wide floor planks are our specialty; please let us know what we can make for you.

Browse wide plank wood floors anytime at hullforest.com. As always, we are here to answer your questions! When you’re ready to find the perfect wood floor for your home, give us a call at 1-800-928-9602 or use our contact form.

We are the largest sawmill in the metro Boston, Providence, Hartford, and Springfield areas. Made in the USA mill-direct custom wide plank flooring. A family business since 1965.
Using Neutral Colored Wood Floors

The homeowners selected neutral “blonde” colored wood floors made from select grade Ash sapwood in order to create a nice contrast with their darker colored Cherry cabinetry and Doug Fir timbers.

The owners of this New Hampshire timber frame home wanted a neutral tone wood floor and they came to Hull Forest Products for select grade sapwood-only Ash wood flooring, which they chose for its hardness, beauty, and–most importantly–its neutral “blonde” color. They did not want their flooring to compete or clash with the warm color of their Cherry cabinetry and Douglas Fir trim. To preserve the pale color of the Ash floor, they finished the floor with Arboritec 20, a clear water-based satin poly finish. A water-based poly provides a clear coat that will not amber with age, so it is a good choice for those interested in pale colored wood floors.

“We chose this product primarily because it is the clearest poly finish available,” said the homeowners. “We did not want to use an oil-based poly because we thought the yellow discoloration that an oil-based polyurethane finish acquires with age would obscure the blonde wood color and clash with the reds in the frame, trim, and cabinetry.” And they have been very pleased with the results. The finish, which was put down in four coats, has proven to be very durable.

The homeowners chose pale and clear-grained Ash wood flooring to carry out their vision for a modern Arts & Crafts home.

The husband and wife team behind this home first drafted a design for their dream timber frame, and brought it to Bonin Architects, who turned the idea into a beautiful home plan. Next they called on Timberpeg to cut their home’s frame from Douglas Fir, and on builder Old Hampshire Designs to put up the frame and shell and make it weather tight.

Clear grained neutral tone Ash hardwood floors contrast nicely with the warm hues of the Douglas Fir timbers and trim and the Cherry cabinetry.

The couple joined forces to act as general contractors for their home, and also did much of the subcontracting (including the interior framing, electrical, and plumbing) while simultaneously holding down full-time jobs. Though challenged to find the time necessary to complete their home, the result was a labor of love and a beautiful modern interpretation of an Arts & Crafts home.

You can view more photos of this home in the Hull Forest Products Ash Flooring Gallery and you can check out the photos at our profile on Houzz.com.

Browse wide plank wood floors anytime at hullforest.com. As always, we are here to answer your questions! When you’re ready to find the perfect wood floor for your home, give us a call at 1-800-928-9602 or send us an email.
Recreational Leases in New England Forests

Forests and wildlife go hand in hand. Forest thinings bring sunlight to the forest floor, leading to new growth that attracts birds, browsers, and predators. Can you find all four coyote pups in this photo? They were exploring a recent timber harvest in Wales, Massachusetts.

To date we have permanently protected over 10,000 acres of our Massachusetts and Connecticut woodlands from development. These working forests provide so many public benefits, including enhanced air and water quality, large unfragmented wildlife habitat, critical wintering and staging areas for migratory waterfowl, carbon sequestration, and a steady supply of timber to meet society’s demand for sustainably grown, renewable building materials.

As part of our commitment to multiple use in our forestland (wildlife, timber, recreation), we lease some of these large forestland properties to individuals and groups interested in exclusive hunting leases and recreational access. The properties generally include access roads, gates, and miles of trails. Some even have warming cabins with wood stoves. Our clients include fish & game clubs whose suburban locations do not allow them to hunt deer; bird dog trial enthusiasts; hunters; and outdoorsmen and women of all kinds. Some of our lease clients have been with us for over 30 years, allowing them and their families to develop a special connection with the land.

For more information on our recreational leasing program, visit us at hullforest.com and click on the “Forestry” tab.

Properties currently available for lease
Barn Destroyed by Hurricane Sandy is Replaced with Hull Timbers

For all you timber frame enthusiasts, check out this youtube video of the Laird family barn raising. After their barn was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, the family hired Todd Mendes Woodworking to build them a new timber frame barn. The timbers were milled from locally grown wood by Hull Forest Products. It is so inspiring to see our timbers used in this way!

Laird Family Barn Raising with Timbers from Hull Forest Products
Join Us At Architecture Boston 2013 November 19-21st

Attention Greater Boston residents! Don’t miss the opportunity to see our locally grown wood flooring in person at the Architecture Boston Expo, held at the Boston Convention and Exposition Center, Hall C, November 19-21st 2013. Save yourself the drive to our Connecticut sawmill and check us out while we’re in your back yard. Produced by the Boston Society of Architects, Architecture Boston is the largest regional conference and tradeshow for the design and construction industries.

We’ll be at booth 936 with samples of our different types of locally grown wood flooring: prefinished, unfinished, and engineered. We hope to see you there!
Explore the Woods With Us This Fall

Portion of the frame and left side landing gear of one of two Navy F6F-FN Hellcats that crashed in the woods of Preston, CT in 1944. (Courtesy of the CT State Historic Preservation Office.)

As a valued member of our community, we’re giving you a heads up on our fall woods walks so you can mark your calendar now and save the dates for these free and educational tours:

Town Forest Does the Public Good:

Explore the recent forest management activities initiated by the Preston Redevelopment Agency and Hull Forest Products on land once owned by the Norwich State Hospital mental health facility. This 2-mile, 2-hour hike over moderate terrain includes a large reservoir, panoramic views of the Thames River, beautiful timber, and historic artifacts from the crash of two Navy Hellcats that went down in these woods while practicing night interception maneuvers in October 1944.
Date: October 19, 2013 10 am (rain date 10/26/13 10 am)
Location: 21 Route 12, Preston, CT
Directions: Approximately 1/4 mile north of the junction of Rte.12 and Rte. 2A on the right. Follow signs to a parking area near the reservoir.
Contact: Hull forester Chris Casadei (860) 235-6550

Forest to Faucet:

Learn how local forests protect watersheds as you explore the beautiful reservoirs of the Southbridge Water Supply and Hull Forestland’s abutting Breakneck Brook Forest. Protected by a conservation easement from MA Fish & Wildlife, the Breakneck Brook Forest is a working woodland that provides drinking water supply protection, recreational opportunity, and a source of timber. This is a 3-mile walk over moderate terrain and should take 2.5 hours.
Date: October 19, 2013 9:30 am
Location: 511 Breakneck Road Southbridge, MA
Directions: From the intersection of South Rd. and Breakneck Rd., take Breakneck Road south for 1 mile and park at the filtration plant.
Contact: Hull forester Mike Bartlett (860) 377-0117
New Woodland Management Video

Interested in learning woodland management 101? Hull Forest Products offers free open-to-the-public woods walks and tours each year to explain the principles of forest management and show off our work. Can’t make it? Fret not, we have recorded the highlights of our latest woods tour in this 7-minute video:
Hull Family Permanently Protects Over 700 Acres of Forestland in Granville, MA

August, 2013, Granville, MA-

Over 700 acres of productive forestland in Granville, Massachusetts have been permanently protected in a collaborative effort between the Hull family, the New England Forestry Foundation, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEA), and the town of Granville, MA. The conserved forestland protects Valley Brook, which is Granville’s largest stream and an important tributary to the Hartford Metroplican District’s Barkhamstead Reservoir, the primary water source for the city of Hartford, CT.

Hull Forestlands L.P., the Hull family land trust, granted a conservation easement for the 715 acres to the New England Forestry Foundation in June 2013. This land protection project is part of the Western Massachusetts Aggregation Project, which aims to create larger unfragmented parcels of land in central and western Massachusetts. The New England Forestry Foundation received a Landscape Partnership Grant from the MA EOEA in 2012 to pursue the project.

The Hull family, who already steward over 8,000 acres of permanently protected forestland in Massachusetts and Connecticut, had long expressed an interest in seeing the Granville forests protected. The newly conserved forests add to large contiguous tracts of conserved forestland in the area, including NEFF’s Phelon Memorial Forest, forests owned by the Hartford Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), and those of other private landowners.

The Hull family’s Granville forests, called the “Noble & Cooley Forest” and the “Valley Brook Forest” will remain in their natural state and continue to provide a source of timber for generations to come. The Hull family will continue to pay taxes on the land annually to the town of Granville. (And since forestland pays more in taxes than it consumes in community services like education, water, and sewer, forestland is a net financial gain for the town compared to residential land.)

The Hull family own Hull Forest Products–the largest hardwood sawmill in the region–and their mission is to preserve working forests, grow trees, and manufacture wood products, thereby satisfying society’s demand for sustainable building materials and forest ecosystem benefits. Selectively harvested timber from the Valley Brook and Noble & Cooley forests will be turned into lumber, flooring, post & beam timbers, wood chips, and fuel wood. These private forests will also continue to provide public benefits that make them important to the region as a whole, including wildlife habitat, enhanced air and water quality, carbon sequestration, and their contribution to the rural character of New England.

For more information on the Western Massachusetts Aggregation Project: http://www.wildlandsandwoodlands.org/activities/protect-land/western-mass-pilot-aggregation-project

For more information on the New England Forestry Foundation: http://newenglandforestry.org/home.html

More information on Hull Forestlands’ Working Forest Conservation Efforts
Connecticut Wide Plank Hardwood Flooring

Live sawn White Oak kitchen flooring from Hull Forest Products (floor #201) 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 is Connecticut’s largest sawmill and premier manufacturer of locally grown wide plank wood flooring. We are located in Pomfret, Connecticut, and we have been offering CT grown wide plank wood flooring mill-direct to homeowners since 1965. In 2017 we were chosen as the wood flooring manufacturer for the new residential colleges at Yale University. You can see our floors throughout the new Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin Colleges at Yale.

Five inch wide rift and quartersawn Red Oak floors from Hull Forest Products, in the library of Benjamin Franklin College at Yale University. Photo by Yale Alumni Magazine.

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

Browse our mill-direct wood floors
Forest to Floor: Sawmill Open House at Hull Forest Products

Hull Forest Products’ sawmill uses two headrigs: a double cut bandsaw with a 1/8 inch kerf (shown above) and a circular saw with a 1/4 inch kerf.

The circular saw was invented in 1813 by a Shaker sister named Tabitha Babbitt (and we still use one today), but you may be surprised to see just how modern lumber manufacturing has become! Join us for our sawmill open house on October 12, 2013, and you’ll see firsthand how sustainably harvested local timber is turned into lumber for flooring, furniture, and pallets, as well as post and beam timbers and railroad ties.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see the behind-the-scenes workings of a modern sawmill and lumber manufacturing facility. Here’s what a past tour participant had to say about the experience:

“Many, many thanks for the wonderful tour of the Hull Forest Products facility. I was impressed beyond words. To see hardwood timber–right off the logging truck–being transformed with sophisticated computer-controlled milling machines into finished product right before my eyes was truly amazing. This process must be experienced firsthand to really appreciate the enormous effort required to deliver such a diverse array of wood products from railroad ties to wide plank flooring.

And to think that this family-owned manufacturing company is based right here in Connecticut at a time when sadly, very little seems to be made in our country any more. I will not only recommend your beautiful timber and flooring products, but will do so proudly and enthusiastically.Thank you for allowing me this exceptional opportunity. Keep up the good work! ”

— Philip Tankard, AIA

The Hull Forest Products open house is scheduled for October 12, 2013 from 8am to 2pm at 101 Hampton Road, Pomfret Center, CT. Tours last approximately 90 minutes. This is an easy walk and much of it is wheelchair accessible. Children are welcome. Free and open to the public. Hope to see you there! Call (860) 974-0127 for more info.

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