The elegant look of a hardwood floor can add warmth and character to any room in a home. The natural characteristics of wood add depth and a visual appearance that many other types of floors try to duplicate. With the demand for hardwood flooring growing manufacturer’s are enhancing their ranges to meet this demand, with better quality finishes and superior construction techniques.
Hardwood floors come in a wide variety of wood species, colours and widths. Besides the classic hardwoods (like red oak, white oak, maple and ash) many manufacturers now offer exotic hardwood species from all over the World. Exotic hardwoods give homeowners the chance to better express their own personal decorating tastes with a more unique looking floor. With so many different types of hardwood flooring now available it is sometime hard to choice which is best suited to you.
Different Types of Wood Flooring
Solid wooden floors are one solid piece of wood that have tongue and groove sides and come in either pre-finished or unfinished styles. Solid wood floors are sensitive to moisture and it is not recommended to install these floors below ground level, or directly over a concrete slab. These floors are for nail-down installations only. You can refinish, or recoat solid wood floors several times, which adds to their appeal and to their long life. There are solid floors that are over 100 years old and are still in good condition.
All solid wood floors will react to the presence of moisture. In the winter heating months, moisture leaves the wood causing the floor to contract which leaves unsightly gaps between each plank. In the summer months when the humidity is higher the wood will expand and the gaps will disappear. If there is too much moisture it may cause the wood planks to cup, or buckle. This is why it is important when installing a solid strip floor to leave the proper expansion area around the perimeter and to acclimatize the wood prior to installation.
Engineered wood floors – These floors are constructed from several wood plies that are glued together. The centre core is generally a softer wood material and is used to make the tongue and groove. A hardwood finish layer is glued on top of the centre core and another softer wood ply is attached underneath the core. This top ply is also called the finish layer and can be constructed of almost any wood specie.
Wood always wants to expand in a certain direction. In the presence of moisture solid wood planks will always expand across the width of the planks, rather than down the length of the boards. To avoid this problem, manufacturers of engineered planks place each ply in the opposite direction of each other. This is called cross-ply construction. Once the wood layers are glued together the plies will counteract each other which will stop the plank from growing or shrinking with changes in the humidity. Engineered wood floors are designed for the floating installation and can be glued together or some now come with a click system.
Veneer wood floors are very similar to laminate floors. The only difference is that with a veneer flooring to top wear layer is a thin piece or real hardwood instead of a photographic image as in laminates. Veneer flooring is usually around 8mm in thickness with the top hardwood layer being around 0.7mm. Advantages of a veneer floors are that they are fast and easy to install and you have a real hardwood floor.
Factory Pre-finished Wood Flooring
Most factory finished hardwood floors have several coats of finish applied to the wood’s surface. As example, many wood floor companies are applying 6-10 coats of a ultra-violet (UV) cured urethane. This would be extremely difficult for someone to duplicate on a job site finish, not to mention how many days it would take. This is one of the reasons why many flooring mechanics, flooring retailers, and builders are pushing pre-finished hardwood floors. Instead of taking several days to install and finish a new hardwood floor a pre-finished hardwood floor is generally done in one day.
The most common finishes are:
UV-cured – Factory finishes that are cured with Ultra Violet lights versus heat.
Polyurethane – A clear, tough and durable finish that is applied as a wear layer.
Acrylic-urethane – A slightly different chemical make up than Polyurethane with the same benefits.
Aluminium Oxide – Added to the urethane finish for increased abrasion resistance of the wear layer, which is becoming extremely popular on the better grade wood floors.
Acrylic Impregnated – Acrylic monomers are injected into the cell structure of the wood to give increased hardness and then finished with a wear layer over the wood.
Unfinished Wood Flooring
If you want a custom stained hardwood floor, or a wood floor to match existing trim than a unfinished hardwood floor is your answer. Unfinished means you start with a bare hardwood floor and than the floor is sanded, stained, and finished in the home. This can be quite a mess and the process does take several days, but your floor will have a finish to you requirements.
Installation Options
Nail Down – Secret nails are used with a wood flooring nailer and mallet to attach the flooring to the sub floor. Solid Strip floors or Plank floors can only be installed on wooden sub-floors or on batons.
Glue Down – Engineered wood floors and parquets can be glued down. This is when you spread the recommended glue all over the sub floor and lay the flooring into the glue.
Floating – This is when a thin underlay is placed between the wood flooring and the sub floor. A recommended wood glue is then applied in the tongue and groove of each plank to hold the planks together. Engineered
Archive for February, 2009
Wood Flooring – Everything You Need To Know
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009Solid Wood Furniture Versus Veneer
Sunday, February 15th, 2009Some makers use both types of construction in building custom furniture and custom cabinets. Now lets look at these two options and their strong and weak points.
Solid wood furniture, this means all exposed parts are made of the same species of all natural wood, with no other materials included, such as plywood or particle board.
Advantages of Solid Wood:
Practical. The durability of solid wood furniture is high on the list. Scratches, dings, dents, water marks, stains can all be repaired. Obviously, the worse the damage the more expensive, but it is certainly easier and less expensive than veneer furniture.
Disadvantages of Solid Wood:
Split. When exposed to extreme atmospheric conditions, solid wood furniture will expand or contract, and may split along the grain of the wood. Some makers use a “floating case system” in which table and case-piece surfaces are attached using a bracket method or elongated holes for screws to slide. This enables furniture to respond to environmental changes without damage. As a rule, though, avoid exposing pieces to strong sunlight or direct heat sources.
Good quality veneer furniture will have a solid core and the legs, posts, doors or drawer fronts will be straight-grain solid wood.
Advantages of Veneer:
Beautiful. The best, most interesting logs are cut into veneer. This is largely an economic decision–sellers and veneer makers can make more money from a high quality log sliced into veneer than they can from sawing it into boards. And certain cuts, such as burls, are structurally unsound in ‘the solid’. These beautiful woods can rarely be utilized unless they’re sliced into veneer
Environmentally kind. Saw timber is typically sawn into 1″ thick boards. The saw cuts a kerf between boards 1/4″ thick that winds up as sawdust. Veneer is not cut from the log but sliced with a knife (like lunch meat) into 1/32″ leaves or sheets. That produces 32 veneer surfaces for every 1 that is gotten from a board and with no wood wasted as sawdust another 8 sheets where the saw blade would have gone. That’s 40 surfaces of wood veneer for every 1 of solid wood.
Creates new design possibilities. Since veneer is so thin and is glued to a stable
Stable. Since veneer is glued to a stable substrate it produces surfaces not prone to warp or splitting or seasonal movement.
Substrates. Plywood and medium density fiberboard, the substrates used for some furniture, are made from low quality trees. This means a market is provided the landowner for these trees. This leads to better forests over time since the trees remaining grow better and faster with less competition for resources. Its like weeding your garden only a lot bigger.
Disadvantages Veneer:
Thin. This is more of a problem for the builder than the buyer. Sand-through in preparation for finishing is ‘touching the third rail’ of woodworking. Such pieces are almost impossible to repair and frequently involve ‘re-design’ (as in cutting off the sanded through area) or making a speculative, difficult repair which can be difficult to hide. Once the piece is completed thickness of the veneer is of no concern.
We at Berkshire Furniture believe that there are good in both kinds. It all depends on who is the manufacturer and how it is built. When buying your piece of furniture, always ask if it is real wood veneers or laminated imitation of wood. If the surface of table top or any wood case top looks Perfect and unreal, then it is most probably not a wood veneer. Pores, scuffs and wood knots can be easily found even on wood veneers if the veneer comes from wood. These pores, nicks and scuffs are the signature of nature and proves to the buyer that yes, this is a slice of real wood that is veneered over this top.
Do you Want Pergo Wood Flooring?
Friday, February 13th, 2009Many people love the look of hardwood flooring, but cringe at the expense and maintenance they require. One of the great alternative products on the market is Pergo wood flooring. Pergo has made their wood flooring products reasonable priced and easy to maintain. Another advantage to using Pergo wood flooring is that you can, quite easily install it yourself.
What is Pergo Wood Flooring Actually Made of?
Pergo has a unique way of making their flooring. It is actually a three piece flooring. The top layer is made from a melamine laminate that is very durable because it is considered high pressured. This gives you the nice decorative look of wood flooring. That is then bonded to a wood core. The wood core is uniquely made so that it does not contract and expand too much and it is very highly moisture resistant. Then they add a backing to it for extra stability.
Preparation is Key to Installing Your Pergo Wood Floors
When you are getting ready to begin it is important to have everything you will need on hand. You will of course need the flooring, and the underlay. The underlay will help with moisture control and also gives you a barrier between the new floor and the old floor. This is very helpful in eliminating that echo sound you sometimes get from wood flooring. The tools you will need are a chop saw, a pull bar, measuring tape, and a mallet. One note, Pergo wood flooring is very hard so make sure that you have a good carbide blade in your chop saw, and the higher the tooth count on the blade, the smoother the cut.
Plan and Begin laying Your Flooring
Now that you have everything you need, you are ready to begin. The first thing you need to do is remove everything from the room. If you are going over vinyl or linoleum you do not need to remove it, Pergo is only 9mm thick so you can easily go right over it. If you had carpet you will need to remove it and all the carpet tacks. Then sweep the floor and make sure all debris is removed. Make sure that you remove all base boards and door casing, this will allow you to make less cuts.
Then determine which way you want to run the floor. That means when you are looking at the room do you want the flooring to run horizontal or vertical? Trying to run the flooring diagonally is a great look but you should only try it if you pretty handy and have a lot of patience because it will require a lot of miter cuts.
Now you are ready to lay the underlay. This should lie side by side, do not overlap it. Start in the center of the room. Pergo has made their wood flooring easy to use, it has a pre-glued tongue and groove system and it literally just snaps together, you can use a mallet just to tap the ends to make sure that the seam is tight. From the center of the room snap together your next piece on the short sides and continue all the way across the floor. For your next row do not line it up with the first piece perfectly, offset it. Otherwise, you will get a seam line and a noticeable repeated pattern. When you get to the edges and they are up against an object, a pull bar comes in handy so that you can still keep the seams tight.
Pergo Wood Flooring is Easy to Select
Along with the fact that the average home owner can install the Pergo wood flooring, they offer a wide variety of looks to choose from. In fact, on their web site you can actually see how your flooring will look in your room. They give you a place to create a virtual room. You can add the type and color of the cabinetry in the room and the wall color. Once you have those in place you can choose any of their floor styles and you can see exactly what your room will look like. This is a great way to get an actual picture in your mind of what the room will look like when it is completed.
Remember when you begin your installation to get everything together first. This will make the entire job go much smoother. If you happen to run into trouble during your installation go back to the home improvement store where you purchased it, they will have professionals on hand that can give you the advice you need to finish your project.