Strong wood flooring will final more than one hundred years, and the finish can be quickly renewed when necessary. Just having wood floors increases the value of your residence.
Not also long ago, the only selection you had was the old-fashioned solid wood tongue and groove strips in maple or oak. Now, wood flooring can be planks from old barns, exotic woods, pre-finished engineered wood strips which eradicate the dust and disruption of finishing on web page. You even can have wood laminate flooring, which is not wood, but looks like wood at a considerably lower price.
Strong WOOD FLOORING – Strong wood floors, while gorgeous, can’t be used everywhere. They have to be nailed to a sub-floor. This makes strong wood unsuitable for use straight over concrete.
Adding a sub-floor amongst the concrete and the wood flooring could result in a height challenge where the floor meets an adjoining space. Moisture causes wood to expand, so it’s not acceptable in basements. Humidity can lead to squeaking and buckling.
The trend seems to be for homeowners to acquire wood flooring with a factory-applied finish. This eliminates dust from sanding, fumes from finishing, and waiting just before the floor can be walked on. An additional advantage is that the factory finishes are usually much tougher than the polyurethane applied in the field.
The downside of pre-finishing is that since that floor doesn’t get sanded following it is installed, there are slight bumps and dips where the sub-floor isn’t perfectly level, and where the flooring strips may possibly vary slightly in thickness.
To hide these misalignments, flooring is accessible with V grooves so that when collectively, the edges are not touching and it’s challenging to notice any imperfections in alignment. Over time, these V grooves will catch dirt and darken, becoming a prominent function in the floor. Not my favorite situation.
One more benefit of finishing following installation is that you can have the floor stained to your liking. If you like the grain of oak, but don’t care for the yellowish tone of the wood, you can make it amber, for example. A skilled finisher will know how to bring out the organic patina of the wood utilizing boiled linseed oil or tung oil.
Most home owners have hardwood flooring. There are also softwoods, like pine and fir, which are quite appealing. These will get nicked up more than time, but they’re meant to be lived on. The extra beat up they get, the better they appear – especially if you have a country or antique flavor running by means of the home. These operate specifically well as wider planks rather than the two 1/2″ strips.
Prices for solid wood flooring differ from $8 to $10 per square foot for typical species, to more than $25 per square foot for the exotic selection. This same price tag range applies to engineered wood flooring.
ENGINEERED WOOD FLOORING – The benefit of applying engineered wood flooring is that it can be used straight more than concrete (simply because you never have to nail it during installation), or below grade (mainly because moisture does not bother it as considerably as strong wood). The wood look comes from a thin veneer of the selected wood, which is pressed onto a number of layers of substrate.
This solution is readily available in strips, planks, or panels that look like planks. It can be nailed down, but is commonly installed as a floating floor. This means the pieces are glued to every single other, but not attached to a sub-floor. This makes it possible for the floor to “float” with seasonal climate alterations or adjustments in humidity.
Practically floor sanding London is pre-completed, and usually comes with the V grooves mentioned earlier. Some can’t be refinished for the reason that that leading veneer is also thin. Other individuals can be – after or twice. It depends on the top layer, which can be something from 1/12″ to 1/4″ based on the manufacturer. In the finish, this flooring charges about as a lot as strong wood flooring, and the only advantage (in my opinion) is that you can “float” it on concrete.
EXOTIC WOODS – More than the past several years, a lot of flooring makers have integrated exotic woods in their lines to meet expanding popularity. Some of these exotic looks are even accessible in wood laminate flooring. In solid planking, exotic woods can price twice as substantially as comparable domestic species, although engineered woods remain closer to the domestic hardwoods.
The appeal of these species is usually in their wealthy colors and their durability. Quite a few are considerably tougher than oak or maple. A quantity of tropical woods have been acclaimed as environmentally friendly due to their swift growth rate. The quickest self-replenishers are bamboo and cork (neither are a wood).
If the environment is of concern to you, look for the FSC stamp on the solution you are obtaining. The Forest Stewardship Council is an environmental group that tracks wood production and certifies woods that are harvested in an environmentally friendly manner.
RECLAIMED WOOD FLOORING – This is yet another way to recycle. It is not new wood that is produced to appear old. Reclaimed wood definitely is old. These antique floor boards come from numerous sources. It could possibly be flooring removed from an old developing or you could get old timbers that are sliced into floor boards.