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Why Choose Hardwood Floors?
WHY CHOOSE HARDWOOD FLOORS?
Health Benefits of Hardwood Floors
The environment Protection Agency has said that indoor air quality is one of our top health threats. Installed in the home, or elsewhere, hardwood flooring can help to contribute to a healthy living environment. Hard surface flooring such as hardwood flooring does not trap or harbor dust mites or molds that cause respiratory problems such as allergies and asthma.
Ecological Benefits of Hardwood Flooring
Hardwood floors are ecologically friendly, since hardwood is a natural resource. Unlike most floor coverings, hardwood flooring is sustainable. Long gone are the days when the trees were cut down with little thought for the long term consequences for the worlds rainforests. Today, most hardwood flooring timber is cut from forests that are carefully managed to ensure sustainability. There is more standing hardwood timber today than there was 50 years ago.
Variety of Hardwood Flooring
Hardwood Floors have come a long way in the past few years. Today there are more choices of hardwood flooring than ever before. Whether you are looking for traditional Oak hardwood flooring, exotic wenge hardwood flooring or trendy bamboo hardwood flooring, solid or engineered hardwood flooring. You can be sure to find a color or style of hardwood flooring to fit your taste.
Maintenance of Hardwood Flooring
With today's advances in hardwood flooring stains and finishes, cleaning your hardwood floor has never been easier. Regular maintenance requires little more than sweeping with a soft broom and wipe with a well rung out cloth, when required.
Warmth of Hardwood Flooring
A hardwood floor retains the warmth. Cosy and intimate, hardwood flooring fills your home with the living, warm spirit of wood.
Affordability of Hardwood Floors
Beautiful hardwood floors need not cost much more than a quality carpet, indeed hardwood floors will work out cheaper in the long run. Unlike a carpet, your hardwood floors will last for years and increase the value of your home.
What type of hardwood flooring?
Hardwood floors are environmentally friendly and they add to the value of a home. Surveys of real estate agents nationwide estimate that hardwood flooring can add as much as $10,000 to $50,000 to a home's resale value.
Solid Hardwood Floors
Solid Hardwood flooring comes in three basic types:
STRIP hardwood flooring accounts for the majority of hardwood flooring installations. Strips usually are 2-1/4 inches wide, but also come in widths ranging from 1-1/2 inches to 3 inches. They are installed by nailing the hardwood flooring to the subfloor.
PLANK hardwood flooring boards are at least 3 inches wide. They may be screwed to the subfloor as well as nailed.
PARQUET hardwood flooring comes in standard patterns of 6" x 6" blocks. Specialty patterns may range up to 36" square units.
Solid Hardwood Floors can be installed on a concrete slab as long as the floor is on or above ground level with proper preparation. Hardwood floors can be sanded and refinished over several generations of use.
Solid hardwood flooring expands and contracts with changes in your home's relative humidity. Normally, installers compensate for this movement by leaving an expansion gap between the hardwood floor and the wall.
Engineered Strip Hardwood floors are made of several layers of different hardwood or different grades of the same wood stacked and glued together under heat and pressure. Engineered hardwood flooring is less likely to be affected by changes in humidity and can be installed above, on, or below ground level. Engineered hardwood floors with thicker top layers can be sanded many times.
Engineered Longstrip floating Hardwood floors consists of a plywood base topped with a 3-5mm thick layer of real hardwood. Plies and thicknesses vary, but three-ply, 9/16 - 5/8" inch hardwood flooring is most common. (Remember that solid hardwood floors, at 3/4 inch, are twice as thick as plastic laminates.) The hardwood wear layer (3.5-4mm thick) of longstrip floating floors can be sanded and refinished up to three times.
Synthetic Plastic Laminates (Pergo) -are not hardwood flooring at all. Look closely at an entire laminate floor, and you'll see that the faux "hardwood grain" pattern repeats itself across the floor. That's because laminate flooring is actually a photograph of real hardwood flooring stuck to a wood composite. Laminates don't sound like real hardwood flooring either.
Common Hardwood Flooring Grades:
Select and Better Grade / Prime Hardwood Flooring- Equivalent to a Select and Better grade. This product is the most uniform in color with very little color variation. The highest quality hardwood flooring available in prefinished.
Select Grade Hardwood Flooring - Above a #1 common grade hardwood flooring. Uniform in color with some color variation. This hardwood flooring allows for some minimal natural variation in color while remaining fairly uniform.
Builder Grade Hardwood Flooring- #1 Grade /Standard Hardwood Flooring-First quality hardwood flooring with a higher degree of color variation. Allows for all color variations of hardwood species. Desirable for a “country look”. Will NOT have open holed knots, cracks, splits, or mis-milled boards that are associated with cabin or tavern grade hardwood flooring. Provides a fully functional hardwood floor with the only difference being that natural color variations and closed knots are allowed.
Country Grade Hardwood Flooring - First quality hardwood flooring with natural color variation. Allows for all natural color variations of natural selection of hardwood species. Desirable for a “country look”. Will NOT have open holed knots, cracks, splits, or mis-milled boards that are associated with cabin or tavern grades. Provides for a fully functional floor.
Rustic Grade Hardwood Flooring - Provides for a more rustic appearing hardwood floor. Will contain many knots and mineral marks. Allows for all color variations and sizes of knots. Desirable for a “country look”. Hardwood flooring planks may have open holed knots, cracks, splits, or mis-milled boards.
