Wooden Flooring
To update and enhance the appearance of your home, you might consider a transformation in the way of wooden flooring. As you will discover in this article, wooden floors are a natural and non-allergenic product, making them an excellent choice for many families. In addition, wooden flooring not only adds value to a home but also retains its value over time. With so many choices of colour, pattern, and style, wooden flooring is hard to beat. Therefore, learn all you can and then see if this type of flooring is not the right solution for your home.
Wooden flooring is available in three primary types. First, you have solid wood floors, which come in both pre-finished and finished styles. With this, the floor material is cute from a tree, as a solid piece of wood. Because the floor is solid, remember that it will respond to humidity changes. Therefore, most experts recommend solid wood floors as "above grade" installations. The installation typically involves nailing the wood to sub-flooring, which creates a clean, finished look. The only thing is that solid wooden flooring does need adequate expansion allowance when installed along vertical walls.
Second, you could go with longstrip, engineered wooden floors, which are a pre-finished product. With this, the design usually involves three plies of wood that are laminated together to make one piece. This style of wooden flooring is comprised of eight-inch wide by eight-foot long planks that are stapled, nailed, glued, or float installed. For this option, the wooden flooring can be used for all grades. Today, there is a newer option that can be installed without glue or nails, known as tongue and groove. Longstrip, engineered flooring is installed on wood sub-floors or concrete, although they are sometimes floated on existing floors. If you want to complete the installation on your own, this type of wooden flooring would be a great choice.
Next are engineered wooden floors, which are also available in both pre-finished and finished options. To create this type of floor, several wood plies are laminated together and then the top is finished with veneer, whether exotic or domestic species of wood. The planks measure in width from two and one-quarter to seven inches, allowing you to change the appearance slightly. Installation in this case would include nailing, stapling, gluing, or floating regardless of grade. This wooden flooring would be installed on wood sub-flooring or concrete slabs and of all wood floors, this is the one less affected by humidity.
Now, in addition to choosing between these three options for wooden flooring, you would then consider pre-finished or finished. With pre-finished, the floor can be installed in most cases in less than a day. Although the process is not nearly as messy as unfinished, you are limited to colours. In addition, pre-finished wooden flooring has as much as seven to ten coats of finish so the product wears extremely well. For the finished option, the floors have to be sanded after being installed to create a nice, smooth finish. These planks are custom stained using the colour of your choice and only has two to three coats of finish. As you can see, there are several things to consider when it comes to wooden flooring but with such diversity you will find something that is perfect.