Hardwood Floor Refinishing in Suffield, CT: Bringing a 1701 Farmhouse Into the Modern Day
How often do you get the opportunity to work on a house that dates all the way back to 1701?
That's what made one of our recent hardwood floor refinishing projects in Suffield, Connecticut so special.
We had the opportunity to work inside the historic Mercy Norton House on South Main Street, a home whose history reaches back more than three centuries.
According to historical records, a frame of the house was deeded to Mercy Norton in 1701, making this one of Suffield's remarkably early surviving homes.
Think about that for a moment.
This house has been standing for approximately 325 years.
Our job wasn't to make a historic farmhouse stop looking historic.
It was to take a tired kitchen floor with an old golden appearance and give it a brighter, cleaner, more modern farmhouse look while respecting the character of this extraordinary old home.
A 1701 House With a Floor That Needed a New Direction
When we first looked at the kitchen, the hardwood had the familiar golden appearance that older finishes can develop.
It wasn't necessarily that the wood itself was unattractive.
The old finish was influencing everything.
The floor had a heavy golden tone that made the kitchen feel darker and more dated than the homeowners wanted.
So the objective became clear:
Could we brighten this floor without taking the character out of a 1701 farmhouse?
Absolutely.
The Transformation Starts With Raw Wood
This is one of the things we love most about sanding older hardwood floors.
You never completely know what you're going to see until the old coating starts coming off.
Pass after pass, the golden finish disappeared.
And underneath it was the raw wood.
Immediately, the room began feeling different.
Lighter.
Cleaner.
Brighter.
This is an important lesson for homeowners with older hardwood floors.
The yellow, orange, honey or golden color you're looking at may not be the actual color of your wood.
Sometimes you're looking at decades of finish.
Professional sanding gives us an opportunity to remove those old coatings and see what the hardwood underneath can become.
Keeping the Floor Light With a Water-Based Finish
Once we reached the properly prepared raw wood, we didn't want to put all that heavy golden color right back.
For this Suffield farmhouse, we chose a water-based finishing system.
Water-based finishes generally allow us to maintain a clearer, lighter appearance than traditional oil-based finishes, which naturally introduce more amber coloration.
That made water-based the right direction for this project.
As the new finishing system went down, the wood retained much more of that fresh, natural character we'd uncovered during sanding.
The result was dramatic.
The kitchen became brighter without becoming sterile.
The floor looked more current without looking out of place.
And this centuries-old home suddenly had what we would describe as a beautiful modern farmhouse appearance.
Modern Farmhouse Doesn't Mean Erasing the History
That's an important distinction.
When you're working in a house this old, we don't believe the goal should be to make everything look brand new.
Old homes have character.
They have imperfections.
They have materials and architectural details that simply can't be duplicated by replacing everything with something manufactured yesterday.
The trick is finding the balance.
In this Suffield kitchen, the lighter floor gave the room an updated appearance while allowing the architecture and farmhouse character to remain.
Old house. Fresh floor.
That's a combination we really enjoy.
Suffield Is a Town Where History Is Everywhere
A project like this feels especially appropriate in Suffield.
Take a drive along historic Main Street and you're surrounded by generations of Connecticut architecture.
The Phelps-Hatheway House & Garden dates to the 18th century and remains one of Suffield's best-known historic properties.
The King House, built by Dr. Alexander King in 1764, is now home to the Suffield Historical Society's museum.
Then there's Suffield's beautiful Main Street Historic District, with its stately homes, mature trees and architectural styles representing different periods of the town's development.
Suffield's history is also tied closely to agriculture—particularly the tobacco farms that became such an important part of the Connecticut River Valley.
And along the Connecticut River is the historic Windsor Locks Canal, built in the 1820s and once used to move river traffic around the Enfield Falls.
In other words, when you're refinishing hardwood in Suffield, you're working in a community where preserving old things isn't unusual. It's part of the town's identity.
NWFA Practices Meet Four Generations of Experience
At Patrick Daigle Hardwood Flooring, Inc., our family's hardwood flooring tradition dates back to 1927.
We're proud members of the National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA), and we believe professional hardwood floor restoration should combine today's sanding and finishing technology with generations of hands-on experience.
Proper sanding matters.
Surface preparation matters.
The finishing system matters.
And understanding what the homeowner is trying to accomplish matters just as much.
Sometimes they want warmth.
Sometimes they want a dark stain.
Sometimes they want traditional oil-based ambering.
And sometimes—as with this historic Suffield farmhouse—they want to remove that old golden appearance and let the room become lighter and brighter.
There isn't one finish that's right for every floor.
The system should fit the wood, the house and the homeowner's vision.
Four Generations Working on a Home More Than Three Centuries Old
There's something else we enjoyed about this project.
We're extremely proud of our own history.
Patrick Daigle Hardwood Flooring's family tradition dates to 1927, and four generations in one trade is something that means a great deal to us.
But then you walk into a house dating to 1701, and suddenly even our history feels young.
This home was already more than 225 years old when our family's flooring tradition began.
That's pretty remarkable.
It also makes us appreciate the opportunity to work on these properties.
We're not simply sanding a floor.
We're becoming one very small part of a building's much longer story.
Hardwood Floor Refinishing Throughout Suffield and Northern Connecticut
We're proud to be ranked #1 in Hartford County by BusinessRate, along with our recognition as #1 in Connecticut.
Today, our hardwood flooring projects take us throughout Suffield, Windsor Locks, East Granby, Windsor, Enfield, Simsbury, Avon, Farmington, Manchester, Glastonbury, Hartford County and communities across Connecticut.
Some are new homes.
Some are commercial properties.
Some need difficult repairs.
And then every once in a while, we get the privilege of working inside a house that's been standing since 1701.
Those are projects you remember.
Have an Older Hardwood Floor in Suffield?
If you live in an older home and your hardwood floors have become yellow, orange, golden or simply darker than you'd like, don't assume the only solution is replacement.
There may be a completely different-looking floor underneath that old coating.
Professional sanding can reveal the raw wood again.
From there, today's water-based finishing systems give homeowners options for maintaining a much lighter, cleaner and more natural appearance.
That's exactly what happened in this historic Suffield kitchen.
We started with an old golden floor in a centuries-old farmhouse.
We sanded away the tired finish.
We exposed the natural wood.
Then we used a water-based finishing system to create a bright, updated appearance that completely changed the feeling of the kitchen.
We didn't take the history out of the house.
We simply brought the floor into the present.
And for a home with roots going all the way back to Mercy Norton in 1701, we couldn't have asked for a more enjoyable project.
Patrick Daigle Hardwood Flooring, Inc.
Fourth-Generation Hardwood Flooring Craftsmanship Since 1927
NWFA Member
Ranked #1 in Hartford County by BusinessRate
Serving Suffield, northern Connecticut, Hartford County and communities throughout Connecticut