Benefits of Wood Flooring
Benefits of Wood Flooring
Timber flooring will last more than 100 years, and the finish can be renewed when needed. Just having wooden flooring increases the value of your property.
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Not too long ago, the only choice you possessed was the old-fashioned timber tongue and groove strips in maple or oak. Today, wood flooring can be planks from old barns, exotic woods, pre-finished engineered wood strips which remove the dust and disruption of finishing on location. You even can have wood laminate kitchen floors, which isn't wood, but appears like wood at a reduced cost.
SOLID WOOD FLOORING - Wood floors, although beautiful, is not used everywhere. They ought to be nailed to a sub-floor. This makes solid wood unsuitable for use directly over concrete.
Adding a sub-floor involving the concrete and the timber flooring might result in a height problem where the floor meets an adjoining room. Moisture causes wood to grow, so it's not appropriate in basements. Humidity can bring about squeaking and buckling.
The excitement seems to be for homeowners to buy wood flooring with a factory-applied finish. This eliminates dust from sanding, fumes from finishing, and waiting ahead of the floor can be stepped onto. Another benefit is that the factory finishes usually are much tougher than the polyurethane applied in the area.
The downside of pre-finishing is the fact that since that floor doesn't get sanded after it's installed, there are slight bumps and dips the place that the sub-floor isn't perfectly level, where the flooring strips might vary slightly in depth.
To hide these misalignments, flooring is available with V grooves so that when together, the edges aren't touching and it is difficult to notice any imperfections in alignment. After a while, these V grooves will catch dirt and darken, learning to be a prominent feature in the floor. Not my personal favorite scenario.
Another advantage of finishing after installation is that you can have the floor stained wish. If you like the grain of oak, along with care for the yellowish tone from the wood, you can make it amber, for instance. A professional finisher will know the best way to bring out the natural patina with the wood using boiled linseed oil or tung oil.
ENGINEERED Hardwood flooring - The advantage of using engineered wood flooring is that it can be used directly over concrete (since you don't have to nail it during installation), or below grade (because moisture doesn't bother becoming much as solid wood). The wood look develops from a thin veneer of the selected wood, that's pressed onto several layers of substrate.
The product is available in strips, planks, or panels that appear to be like planks. It may be nailed down, but is typically installed as a floating floor. This means the pieces are glued to one another, but not attached to a sub-floor. This permits the floor to "float" with seasonal weather changes or changes in humidity.
Virtually all engineered wooden flooring is pre-finished, and usually has the V grooves mentioned earlier. Some can not be refinished because that top veneer is way too thin. Others may be - once or twice. It all depends on the top layer, which can be anything from 1/12" to 1/4" depending on the manufacturer. In the end, this flooring costs about as much as solid wood flooring, along with the only advantage (for me) is that you can "float" it on concrete.
EXOTIC WOODS - Over the past several years, many flooring manufacturers have included exotic woods of their lines to meet growing popularity. Many of these exotic looks are available in wood laminate flooring. In solid planking, exotic woods may cost twice as much as comparable domestic species, although engineered woods remain nearer to the domestic hardwoods.
The good thing about these species can often be in their rich colors and their durability. Many are considerably harder than oak or maple. Many tropical woods have been acclaimed as beneficial to our environment due to their quick rate of growth. The quickest self-replenishers are bamboo and cork (neither certainly are a wood).
If the environment is of doubt to you, look for the FSC stamp about the product you're buying. The Forest Stewardship Council is definitely an environmental group that tracks wood production and certifies woods which might be harvested in an eco-friendly manner.
RECLAIMED Hardwood flooring - This is a different way to recycle. It is not new wood that is certainly made to look old. Reclaimed wood really is old. These antique floor boards originate from several sources. It could actually be flooring taken from an old building; or you could get old timbers which are sliced into floor boards.
Salvage companies dive into lakes and rivers to pull up old trees that sank from the 19th century, on their way to become milled. Still other wood is reclaimed when old structures like barns, boxcars, or industrial building, are demolished. Some dealers will give you a history of the product you're buying.
This can be a win-win. You get a distinctive floor, and you also help save a forest. Older wood have a straighter, tighter grain. Decades of oxidation have deeper, richer colors. It is not perfect, but it's got character. You could possibly see nail holes, stains, and also minor insect damage in the boards, all of which plays a part in their beauty.
