Wood Flooring in Pocatello, Idaho

Pocatello grew as a railroad town, the Union Pacific and Oregon Short Line junction that gave the city its Gate City nickname. That railroad money built the neighborhoods we work in most. The Old Town Residential Historic District, on streets like South Garfield near the Portneuf River, holds homes from the 1890s through the 1920s: a rare Second Empire house from 1894, plus rows of Craftsman bungalows and American Four-Squares from around 1915. The West Side is older-home country too, named Idaho's best old-house neighborhood by a national magazine in 2010. Those early homes were floored with old-growth softwood, mostly tight-grained Douglas fir, with oak in the finer rooms. That fir is a different animal from today's lumber. It was milled from slow-grown timber, so the grain is dense and the boards are often full thickness, which means they can take a careful sanding and come back beautifully even after a century of wear. We treat it with respect: a light cut rather than an aggressive one, filler and lace-ins where radiators or walls left scars, and a finish that suits the age of the house. Fir dents more easily than oak and shows every heel mark, so we talk through finish sheen and durability before we start. For many Pocatello owners the right move is restoring the original floor, not covering a genuinely historic one with new product.