A growing option for flooring, unfinished hand-scraped hardwood gives a space a rustic and aged character. Such hardwood is scraped, brushed, finished, or aged to have this appearance, and hand-scraped flooring is available for nearly all species. If you've been looking to give a space such a character, install unfinished hand-scraped flooring into your home and finish it with a shade you prefer.

Unfinished hand-scraped flooring is distressed manually, and as a result, no two boards are similar. Nevertheless, the techniques to distress the wood vary and may be one of the following:

• Time Worn Aged involves creating a distressed look through age. The appearance may be further emphasized through contouring, highlighting the grain, or staining with a darker color.

• Wire Brushed accents the hardwood's grain and removes the sapwood.

• Antique is another aging technique. The wood used, however, may be of a lower grade.

• Hand Sculpted creates a smoother distressed appearance for your floor.

• French Bleed is characterized by deeper beveled edges. The joints are them emphasized with darker stain.

• Pegged is decorative hand-scraped flooring that cannot be installed onto a subfloor.

• Hand Hewn and Rough Sawn describes the roughest hand-scraped flooring available.

• Custom Unfinished allows you to install standard flooring and distress it later. After the unfinished flooring is installed, a professional alters it through beating with chains, pickeling, bleaching, or fastening with antique nails. Afterwards, the finish is applied.