Nelson Hardwood floors have come a long way in the last quarter century. We are now seeing hardwood floors in kitchens, baths, and utility rooms. In choosing a floor, you need to know what types of wood you have to work with.
Hardwood floors are healthier than wall-to-wall carpeting. They keep down such allergy-producing matter as dust, pollen, and animal dander. Installing hardwood floors can greatly increase the market value of your home. They are easy to keep clean and can last forever.
Solid flooring is 3/4” thick, is nailed down, and is generally in pieces that don’t run the full length of the room and vary from 2’ to 8’ in length. The pieces have a tongue and groove, and the base molding is usually of the same species of wood. The most popular areas of the home for solid flooring are the living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms.
Laminated, or engineered wood flooring, is a wood product consisting of layers of pressed wood with the grains running in the opposite direction for strength. Laminated wood is generally used in basements, kitchens, and utility rooms where the humidity may be higher. Laminated wood contracts and expands less than solid wood flooring. Floor designers have a wide variety of species and colors for laminated wood flooring. Usually laminated wood flooring is finished at the factory.
Less popular in homes are acrylic impregnated flooring whereby acrylics are injected directly into the wood itself that makes a very hard and durable floor system, and is generally found in commercial settings such as shopping malls.
Wood flooring is available in several styles. Strip flooring is linear flooring that varies from 2 1/4” to 3 1/2” wide. Plank flooring is like strip flooring, but the widths are much wider, often up to 6”, which is more traditional and more popular on the East Coast. Parquet flooring is a series of wood flooring pieces that create various geometric designs.
Solid wood floors expand and contract with the relative humidity of your home. Installers leave an expansion gap around the perimeter of the floor where it meets the walls and around obstacles like kitchen islands. Matching base molding, such as shoe, cove or quarter round covers up this expansion gap.
Some words of caution. If your house has pressboard or particleboard underneath existing rugs, you will need to remove this before installing a hardwood floor. Particleboard can more than double in height if it gets wet and is an unsatisfactory underlayment for your new hardwood floor.
With the proper rental tools and some basic construction skills you can install hardwood floors yourself. The laminated floorings are the easiest to install. Some hardwood flooring comes pre-finished from the factory. For unfinished hardwood flooring, the best advice you can have is to call a pro for the finish. The professionals have high-end equipment, far superior to that which you can rent, will put down a much better finish, last longer, and most importantly, will do it in much less time than you can yourself.
When getting ready to install hardwood flooring, it is recommended to acclimatize the wood to the temperature and humidity of your home. It is impossible for this to happen if the flooring stock is left in its packaged bundle from your supplier. Open the bundle and rearrange the wood strips in a crisscross fashion and leave them for about 10 days in your home — not your garage or basement.
Choose the right finish for your hardwood floor. There are two choices: surface finishes and penetrating finishes. Surface finishes are the most popular. This is a stain then a top coat of polyurethane. They are durable and resist moisture and are easy to keep clean. Direct or indirect sunlight can change a wood floor’s finish. However, the modern urethane finishes tend to slow down color changes more effectively.
Then we have the penetrating stains. They penetrate the wood to provide color and form a protective seal. A wax coating on top gives a sheen that can be maintained with additional applications every so often. However, water-based cleaning products should never be used to clean floors finished with penetrating stains. Instead use cleansers specifically designed for wax-covered flooring. Even the hardiest wood floors get scratches and can easily be repaired by applying a new coat of wax and then buffing.
Properly maintained hardwood floors can last a lifetime. The key to preserving your beautiful flooring is to assure that the finish is still doing its job. You can test this yourself by going to an area that is most worn and put a couple of tablespoons of water on the floor. If the water beads up so that it wipes up without a trace, not to worry, your floor’s finish is in good shape. And if the water soaks into the wood after several minutes, darkening the floor only slightly, not to worry, this is typical wearing and an immediate refinish is probably not necessary. However, if the water is immediately sucked into the wood, leaving a dark spot, your floor’s finish is probably due for a recoat or refinish.
Installing hardwood floors is a great investment, will add value to your home and is well within the capabilities of the do-it-yourself renovating home owner.
