1. New yellow pine is a soft wood. The older it is, the greater the chance that it was from old growth and significantly stronger/more dense. It was a pretty common flooring material in much of the south.

2. You've got the boards - give it a test run. You can always sand it off. Most pine doesn't take darker stains all that well, so I'd try natural or something pretty light.

4. I think yellow pine would fit in very well with a house designed with "rustic" tastes.

In our current home, the upstairs is heart pine except for a back room. It looks like they enclosed a porch at some point and put down a yellow pine floor. We just had them all refinished and the yellow pine looks really nice just natural w/ poly. (At least I think it does.)

If it's heart pine, it will turn red when wetted - no need for staining, a clear finish will keep it red although I prefer an oil finish to poly. Other pine will remain yellowish when wetted.

Since it's not down yet, why not do a test run on the back side of the boards, with different stains and finishes? Then lay out the "test" you like best first in your kitchen, and then the living room, for a day or two. See which feels right.

Carla in Sac

As has been posted,pine is soft. We found it under many layers of linoleum in our kitchen when we remolded years ago and thought, this is great, but found that just about anything hard would damage it,high heels, dog nails, etc.It was very pretty but just not durable.By the way,you said Fort Ritchie,so we would be close,I am in Hagerstown.

Here is a table showing the relative hardness of different woods used for flooring.

Here is a link that might be useful: wood hardness table

Christophern, it's nice to know that there are people close buy that have the same interests.

I actually live in PA. My husband was doing some landscaping at Fort Ritchey and was told they were going to tear down the pavillions to make way for a new road. DH asked the supervisor in charge of the project if he could salvage some of the boards, and after many hours of hard labor we salvaged a good deal of the top of one of the pavillions. The security guys apparently didn't like us working there so the pavillions were knocked down and buried. Tons of beautiful yellow pine tongue and groove boards destroyed. Many of the boards were 14 to 16 feet long. That kind of broke my heart, but we have our own little piece of history to put in our home.

Thanks, mightyanvil, for the table. I had no idea that yellow pine was so soft.

I haven't tested any stains to see what they would look like, but I think I will give that a try. Right now I have some old barn boards as a chair rail in my living room that will have to come out. I kind of hope we can do it carefully to save them. That makes me think that I should start with the kitchen. Until the living room is gutted and redone, it would look odd there.