Wood Flooring in Ashton, Idaho

Ashton sits high on the Fremont County farm belt, where the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway leaves US-20 and the fields run to seed potatoes, barley and alfalfa. The town grew as a railroad hub early in the 1900s, the stop where Yellowstone-bound tourists changed trains and where dam-building supplies came in before being hauled north. A lot of the housing dates from that era: farmhouses and town homes a century old, built the way floors were framed then, with finish boards face-nailed over diagonal plank sheathing rather than today's glued plywood. That old assembly is why squeaks and loose boards are the signature Ashton complaint. Over a hundred years, the plank sheathing shrinks and cups, the cut nails loosen, and boards begin to move against each other and rub, which is the noise you hear. Long, cold winters at this elevation drive hard seasonal wood movement that works the fasteners looser still. We fix it from the cause, not the symptom: locating the loose boards and the gaps between board and joist, then re-securing from above with the right fasteners, or from below through the crawlspace where we can reach. Where boards have split or worn through at a traffic path, we splice in matching stock. Many of these farmhouse floors are fir or early oak worth refinishing once they are solid, so we quiet the floor first, then sand and finish it as one.