Hardwood Flooring
Table of Contents
Your Guide To Hardwood Flooring
Hardwood flooring is one of the most attractive investments you can make in your house. Along with the beauty and warmth it adds to your home, it also enhances your home’s value.
Hardwood Area offers a variety of wood floors in various styles and colors so that you can pick the proper appearance for your home, but you’ll have to think about more things than just aesthetics.
There’s nothing quite like the timeless appearance of hardwood flooring. Today, there are many types of hardwood flooring choices out there to fit your family’s lifestyle and budget.
Despite what you select for your house, you can expect an increase in your home’s value as well as added elegance and warmth that you’ll enjoy for many years to come.
Hardwood Flooring Types
Opportunities are practically limitless when it comes to selecting hardwoods. If you need help choosing between the different types, contact us, and our experts will help you.
Solid hardwood flooring is created from one piece of solid hardwood and can be sanded or refinished. They are available in a diversity of wood kinds and colors and immediately add value to a house.
Engineered hardwood floors are created from a mixture of solid wood and plywood. They are an eco-friendly option and are less expensive than solid woods. Available in waterproof alternatives, engineered hardwood is perfect for kitchens, bathrooms, and other places prone to humidity.
Hardwood by Style
Types of hardwoods come in a variety of species, colors, shades, widths, and textures. We at Hardwood Area offer a variety of wood types, including maple, oak, and hickory. Each one has a unique look, so make sure to research various types before choosing the one you like most.
There are also various color shade opportunities to select from, differing from light shades such as white, cream, or gray to darker colors such as red, orange, brown, and more. It doesn’t matter if you want plain white or red oak flooring or dark, coffee-colored walnut flooring. We’ve got a look that’s most suitable for your house.
Hardwood Flooring Price
These benefits don’t come cheap, though. The price of hardwood flooring installation alters depending on material: traditional hardwoods such as pine cost around 3 to 5 dollars per square foot and another 3 to 5 dollars per square foot for installing.
Luxury woods such as mahogany and other foreign hardwoods require around 7 to 16 dollars per square foot, and installation adds another 5 – 7 dollars per square. For instance, let’s continue with traditional but top-quality hardwood, let’s say 10 dollars per square foot. At that cost, the installation of hardwood flooring in a 1,000 square-foot home costs 10,000 dollars.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Hardwood Flooring
Advantages
A long-term purchase
Hardwood flooring lasts for more than 100 years if they are appropriately maintained.
Variety
When you’re choosing hardwood flooring, you will be offered a vast collection of options.
Ageless quality
Your carpet and vinyl flooring require to be renewed after a specific duration though wood floors just need to be restored or re-sanded.
Easy maintenance and cleanliness
If you clean the wood floors by vacuuming, mopping, and keeping them dry, then it’s reliable to go.
Fresh air quality at house
Hardwood flooring does not nurture any kind of parasites such as fleas, dust insects, or spores.
More suitable for babies
One of the popular options for children’s bedrooms is usually hardwood flooring. It is safe and non-toxic, which is most suitable for babies who have just learned to crawl.
Great acoustics
With hardwood floors, you can avoid any kind of vibrations. Hardwood flooring is a great idea when not working in a noisy situation; otherwise, it can make it seem like a cafeteria.
Enhances the value of your house
Even though the upfront price of wooden floors is high, it tends to increase its value.
Disadvantages
Prone to termite attack
Termites feed on hardwood, and many of the modern houses are constructed by keeping such risks in mind. Such infestations are well-known with spruce and southern yellow pine wood, along with numerous others.
Avoid water touch
You can clean the hardwood flooring with a mop. However, it should not drip with water. The wooden floors will be damaged in the occurrence of leakage.
Scratches
Hardwood flooring is prone to have scratches and dents, so you have to take proper care. At the same time, there are also risks of getting spots on the flooring if there is spillage.
Restricted usage
Hardwood floors are not a very proper choice for all the places in your house. We do not suggest you install it in your bathroom or your kitchen.
Solid Hardwood Flooring
As its title implies, solid hardwood floors are one substantial part of wood sawn from a log. The regular thickness is 3.4 inches, though there are also choices 5/16 inches or 0.5 inches thick.
More traditional houses usually have even more solid and thicker lumber; pre-1850 homes can have flooring as solid as 11/8 inches. Solid hardwood floors have three kinds of cut styles.
Plain-sawn, cut right across the length, with rings thirty degrees or fewer to the front of the plank, has a fire pattern. It was frequently utilized in homes constructed from the early 20th to mid 20th century, generally in 2-3 inches red oak wood.
Quarter-sawn, which is a cut after the plank is split into fourths, dispenses off the extension rings of the wood at a 60-90-degree angle, as great as some bits. It was the most popular form before the early 1900s, with white-colored oak wood a preference and walnut wood, maple hardwood, and chestnut wood.
Rift-sawn cut, with planks, are made perpendicular to the grain, come with extension rings displaying at a 45-degree angle. . Its good texture is frequently combined with quarter-sawn planks, and it appears in all of the similar kinds.
When dealing with leakage or shrinkage caused by humidity, quarter-sawn or rift-sawn planks are recognized for their durability; plain-sawn boards have more action.
The planks can have a square frame, which produces a flat surface with no holes from plank to plank and a beveled side, with a groove within planks, providing them with a rustic appearance. A Microplane beveled frame has still a more inadequate track though it covers rough planks adequately.
Benefits Of Solid Hardwood Floors
It is one of the most traditional and deluxe kinds of hardwood floors.
The boards are constructed from only one substantial part of hardwood.
You have the choice of refinishing and sanding the floors several times if and the time it is needed.
The solid hardwood floors have a long-life prospect, giving a timeless and attractive appearance.
You can see solid hardwood floors in a broad category of types of wood, varying from dark to light with various patterns and textures.
The boards of solid hardwood can be obtained in different lengths and various diameters so that you can pick something which fits your tastes.
The groove and tongue attachment methods are one of the more well-organized & traditional ways of installation.
You’ve got the option of unfinished boards or pre-finished planks of solid wood flooring.
Where Should You Utilize It
Hardwood flooring are suggested for nearly all the places of a home, such as dining rooms, living rooms, bedrooms, or hallways. They are frequently used in kitchens, though be informed that humidity can cause warping over time.
Utilize covers or throw carpets and rugs in spaces where water may drip, like by the sink, to protect the flooring. Solid hardwood floors usually aren’t suggested for bathrooms as the high dampness level makes it difficult to keep them in a great position, though with good protection, they can be used there as well. It’s most reliable not to utilize hardwood flooring in basements, the accused, again, is damp.
Installation
A tongue-and-groove board has a groove part on one surface and a ridge or tongue on the other side, which lets the planks be snugly connected. Unlike engineered hardwood flooring, which is “floated” above a sublayer and needs no nails or adhesive, hardwood flooring are attached to a subflooring, typically plywood or furring pieces over a vapor bar. The boards are nailed to the subflooring within the tongue so the nails do not reveal when the flooring is finished.
How Long It Will Remain
Solid hardwood floors can remain 100 years or more and seldom requires to be substituted.
Price of Solid wood floors
Pre-finished solid wood floor equalizes around 8 dollars for every square foot, within a variety of 5 to 12 dollars by the square foot.
Engineered Hardwood Flooring
An Introduction To Engineered Hardwood
Part hardwood flooring, part human-made substances, engineered hardwood floors offer the greatest of both classes. The actual hardwood veneer cover gives the fashion and excellent appearance of naturally happening boards.
Engineered hardwood highlights a thin veneer first layer of solid hardwood. The natural head coat makes engineered hardwood just as long-lasting as traditional woods and gives the corresponding timeless and classic appearance.
Then there’s the center of the board, generally created from films of plywood or fiberboard in high-density or you can call it HDF. These coatings are located perpendicular to each other, which forms a stable frame construction in the center.
The endurance and stability of the board come from this structure. A combination of wax and glue sticks this all to each other, which gives some water protection in comparison to solid hardwood.
Engineered Hardwood Layering
Engineered hardwood is made of either structured sheets of plywood or from a particular solid layer of HDF.
Wear or Veneer sheet: Here is the place you see the veneer of natural hardwood that provides your floor its attractiveness and its unique appearance.
The hardwood veneer can be virtually any wood type you like, usually an old-growth hardwood such as oak or hickory. Veneer films regularly expose the real sense of the wood with real cracks and knots.
Center layer: HDF and Plywood centers give some humidity resistance, particularly if combined with wax or other water-repellent substances.
If you have a plywood center, the plywood sheets are situated to build a web structure, which gives stability and endurance. An HDF center is much denser than plywood, and it is a singular, solid sheet.
Backing part: This is the basis of the flooring. Normally it’s constructed of HDF or plywood.
Advantages of Engineered wood
Handy: Engineered hardwood can be placed on every level, making the opportunities infinite.
Selections: Engineered wood appears in hand-shaped, smooth, wire-brushed, and distressed coverings, providing you the opportunity of giving a little unique feeling to the product and matching it to your decoration.
Green: Engineered hardwood floors give a more environmentally beneficial outcome and frequently use up to 70 percent repurposed hardwood consumption for the center and backing, which indicates all the recycle-loving people will support and it seems just as great on your floors!
Disadvantages of Engineered wood
Refinishing: Not like solid wood which can be refinished, engineered hardwood has a narrow wood coat on top. Always ask the Hardwood Area’s guidance before you think about refinishing. Trying to refinish the engineered hardwood could possibly destroy the product.
Way of thinking: Some people prefer to acknowledge that hardwood is surely created of a solid hardwood board, exactly like buying designer jeans, you like to ensure it’s trustworthy. However, engineered hardwood is not created of 100 percent solid hardwood, you can consider it as “intelligent” hardwood, a true hardwood flooring that is much handier than a solid hardwood board. For some people, only solid wood will do, though, for many, the benefits of engineered hardwood flooring usually tip the scales.
Price: Engineered wood is much more of an investment. Because the first veneer layer is real wood, it is single to every board with real twists and unique texture without any repeated pattern such as some laminates.
Because engineered hardwood looks, senses, and feels just like solid wood, it has a bonus value in comparison to laminate flooring.
Where Should You Utilize Engineered Hardwood Floors
Engineered hardwood floors remain in places that get light dampness, like bathrooms, basements, kitchens, and above concrete flooring, however, it isn’t going to remain in a high-humidity condition, a basement that floods, for example.
When utilizing engineered hardwood flooring, the dampness content in an adjoining concrete slab should not pass 4%, the place must be examined first to pinpoint correct levels of humidity, and a vapor obstacle underlayer is suggested in damp-prone places.
Nowadays’ engineered wood flooring can be difficult to detect from antique hardwood floors.
Installation
Engineered hardwood floors choose the Click Loc method, tongue-and-groove planks that fasten together to form a strong seam. The method needs no glue, therefore the flooring has hovered over a cork or foam sublayer, and it could be utilized over any fastened subflooring, concrete, plywood, tile, old hardwood, etc.
How Long It Will Remain
The existence of engineered hardwood floors is pending on the width of the boards: Thinner kinds will remain 20 to 30 years, and thicker and more solid boards have a lifespan of 40 – 80 years. These lengthened lifetimes might be true for great-quality engineered hardwoods, though not correct for the many low-priced produced engineered flooring in shops.
It’s difficult for a customer to identify the distinction visually between high-quality engineered hardwood floors and more affordable ones. Price point can be one symbol, although the number of courses is a more suitable one. The higher, the more useful: Don’t select an engineered hardwood flooring with less than 5 layers.
Price of Engineered wood flooring
Engineered wood floors are somewhat lower-priced than solid hardwood floors. The normal range engineered floors are 2.5 to 10 dollars by the square foot, with most maximum kinds falling in the 4 to 7 dollars for every square foot range.