Vintage Poplar

History and Characteristics of Vintage Poplar

Vintage Poplar is harvested from barns, houses, and various buildings throughout the Northeast, Mid Atlantic, Midwest, and the Southeast. Poplar is valued for its light weight and easy work-ability, as well as its strength to weight ratio and was widely used as structural framing beams, sawn boards, residential flooring, and moldings. The tulip poplar tree is the state tree of Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Poplar remains valued for many modern solid and engineered wood applications.

Vintage Poplar has visual characteristics not found in freshly harvested poplar. Distinct colors from white to olive green to deep purple give antique poplar a unique appearance. Slightly denser than modern yellow pine, Vintage poplar can be used in high traffic areas where dents are acceptable. Customers seeking a “south west” ambiance find poplar to be appropriate. While reclaimed wood is usually clear or naturally finished, poplar is one of the most easily stained woods available. With the correct stain, poplar can be mistaken for cherry, maple, walnut, birch and several other hardwoods.

Specifications

Reclaimed solid wood flooring is normally milled to 17mm thickness (same top wear layer above the T&G as 3/4”, with a thinner bottom layer to maximize yield from scarce supplies of raw material).
Vintage Lumber is also able to meet customer’s requirements for both thinner (minimum 3/8”) and thicker solid flooring.
Most of our solid flooring is produced in random widths(RW) from 2” to 10”, on the full inch face. Typical RW ranges are 3” to 6”(3,4,5,6), 3” to 8”, 7” to 10”, or any combination needed. Board widths of over 20” are sometimes available in certain species. The wider the widths required, the higher the costs. Our RW flooring is usually not sold as a repeating pattern(equal lineal feet of each width). For prompt filling of orders, we base our RW counts on available widths in inventory, and we calculate a 9 or 10 board width sequence to facilitate installation to avoid all of one width remaining at the end.