The herring-bone pattern of laying floors may be used to good advantage when the units are of narrow widths and somewhat longer than 
usually seen 
A Revolutionary Idea in Flooring 
THE USE OF SMALL UNITS AS A SOLUTION FOR THE DIFFICULTY OF SECURING 
A SERVICEABLE AND ATTRACTIVE HARDWOOD FLOOR AT MODERATE PRICE 
by J. Crow Taylor 
Photograph by Leon Dadmun 
F LOORING, like many other details in house designing, is 
more or less an unsolved mystery to the average individual, 
and some of the confusion about it is directly traceable to the fact 
that ordinarily when a magazine or technical journal goes into 
the subject of flooring the discussion is given over to the highly 
artistic and expensive type of floor. Sometimes the average 
reader concludes from this that the ideal in flooring is too expen¬ 
sive, and at other times the conclusion may be drawn from .read¬ 
ing details of the care involved in keeping a highly polished floor 
in order, that it would be an uncomfortable thing to live on and 
would require rubber heeled shoes and rubber tipped furniture to 
keep it from being scarred up. 
Some people may want floors of this kind, and everybody may 
occasionally long for an artistic floor of this high order on some 
special occasion, but the average house owner wants a floor that 
will give both satisfaction and service and leave him feeling com¬ 
fortable in the matter of cost and care. 
He can have it, too. It is much easier, in fact, to have a floor 
that is pleasant to look at, and at the same time is serviceable and 
comfortable, than it is to have some of the over-elaborate floors. 
It will give more satisfaction in the end and cost so much less that 
the only wonder is that more people have not heretofore gotten 
entirely satisfactory floors by seeking utility rather than ornament. 
The secret of satisfaction in a floor is small units. That is, nar¬ 
row widths. Back in the pioneer days of lumbering and building 
flooring boards were made 8, io and 12 inches wide. Finally, 
when machine planing came in, the width was reduced to 6 inches 
and then to 4 inches, and finally to 2^2 inches. 
Meantime the hardwood flooring industry developed and 
brought with its development still narrower units. This is really 
a part of the explanation of the success and the improved appear¬ 
ance secured by the use of hardwood flooring. It was the intro¬ 
duction of narrow units and the elimination thereby of unsightly 
cracks. The units were reduced down to 2}4 inches and 2 inches 
on the face, after being finished, and now there is coming a new 
era with still smaller units. 
The popular width in flooring today among those who have fol¬ 
lowed it out to a logical sound basis, is 1^2 inches wide on the 
face. This is to be had right along in oak flooring, and soon it 
will likely be available in practically all woods. When it is, every¬ 
one can have a satisfactory floor no matter whether it is made of 
oak, maple, beech, pine, fir, gum or other wood. A floor made 
up of narrow strips carefully put together cannot shrink enough 
in any one given strip to cause unsightly cracks. Consequently, 
Floor patterns need not be elaborate or involved in design to be attractive. Simplicity serves here as well as in other decoration 
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