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
Wood paneling is a wall constructed from rigid or semi-rigid components, which are traditionally interlocking wood but it, could be also plastic or other materials.
Wood paneling is used in architecture and design, ornamental treatment of the walls, ceilings, doors, and furnishings that consist of a sequence of broad, thin sheets called panels that were framed together by smaller, thicker strips of wood. It was developed in antiquity to make rooms in stone buildings to look more comfortable. The panels work to insulate the room from the cold stone.
In modern buildings, it is installed for decorative purposes. Wood paneling such as wainscoting and boiserie in particular, may be extremely ornate and is particularly associated with 17th and 18th century interior design, Victorian architecture in Britain and its international contemporaries. Wainscot is a paneling design used to the lower 900mm to 1500mm of an interior wall, underneath the decorative rail on the wall or chair and above the skirting board or baseboard.
This style is traditionally created from tongue and groove boards though bead board or decorative panel such as wooden door might have is also common. Wainscot is also referring to other materials used in similar fashion. Its original purpose was to cover the lower parts of the walls in which in houses constructed with poor or nonexistent damp proof courses are often affected by rising dampness but now it general purpose is for decorative use. Boiserie is the term used to define ornate and intricately carved wood paneling.
Some early examples of boiserie were unpainted but later the raised moldings were painted or gilded. Boiserie is popular during the 17th and 18th century French interior design and Palace of Versailles has many fine examples. Wood panels were not just confined to the walls of the room but were also used to decorate doors, frames, cupboards and shelves. Wood paneling has been popular for hundreds of years ago and indeed it a natural wood adds warmth and elegance but the only way the craftsmen of earlier were able to apply wood paneling was in frames or what they called wainscoting.
Now, wood paneling became so popular that it is used in homes everywhere, in the kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom. Today, wood paneling in homes have a lighter and sleeker look. Those people who buy or own older homes with dark paneled rooms may be faced with the decision of keeping the paneling as in, removing or changing it and the easiest and most cost effective way to change the look of a paneled room is to add color by painting the paneling.
The wood paneling is often passed over as a quality building material. The images of the inexpensive imitation composite paneling the gained fame and fortune during the last half of the 20th century tend to dominate not to knock the cheaper alternative. Wood paneling can be a wonderful and economic addition to any other living space but many homeowners fail to consider the higher end wood paneling options available to them.
From a dramatically crafted raised panel accents to knotty pine tongues and groove walls and ceilings wood panels can convert any home from ordinary to extraordinary overnight. In wood paneling, you have many options to choose from that are available in the market today that will suits your tastes and budget. And if you are really fascinated in wood paneling, you can ask the help of an experience contractor, dealer or installer about what alternatives is best for you. And without a doubt, quality wood panels are one of the most beautiful and timeless investments you can make when it comes to enhancing the look and character of your home.
Wood floors are a very popular selection for home-improvement projects these days. It’s not hard to see why they are so popular, as they have a beautiful, natural appearance, and are comfortable to walk on. They can be a little more difficult to install than some other more simple flooring materials, but they are still well within reach of the ability of most average homeowners.
The one thing that you have to understand about wood floors is that water and moisture are its enemies. So a wood floor will fare best in a moisture free environment. You even have to be careful when it comes to cleaning your wood floors so that excess water or moisture doesn’t seep into the cracks and cause problems later on.
There are a few different kinds of wood flooring to choose from and we will try to discuss each one to help you get more familiar with them.
First of all, let’s talk about strip flooring. This may be what you most often think of when you think of hardwood flooring. Strip flooring is made up of boards that are usually 3/4 inches thick and 2 1/4 inches in width. They are designed as tongue and groove boards that fit very closely together as they are installed. As you put down each board, you simply place a nail through the tongue of the board to hold it down, and when the groove of the next board fits up next to it, the nail will be covered. As with most kinds of wood flooring, strip flooring benefits from having a solid subfloor installed underneath to hold it in place. Often subfloors are made up of 3/4 inch to one inch plywood sheets that are nailed down first.
Plank flooring is very similar to strip flooring except that the boards can come in random widths of 3 in. or more. The length is usually around two to 8 ft.
Parquet flooring is very popular these days as it features dozens of patterns, textures, and thicknesses. Very often, parquet flooring consists of a veneer of decorative hardwood glued in patterns to squares of softwood backing, then laid on a subfloor. It can be very easy to install, and yet still has the look of a custom designed floor. The subfloor must be very clean and dry in order to get proper adhesion for the parquet floor that goes on top. Sometimes adhesive must be spread on the subfloor first as you install the parquet tiles, and sometimes the adhesive comes as a backing on the parquet tiles themselves.
Floating floors are becoming very popular too, as you don’t have to actually fasten it down to a subfloor. Instead the plastic laminate material is interlocked and placed on top of a thin foam pad that in turn rests on a subfloor made up of plywood or concrete. Laminate is very durable, and scratch resistant and can tolerate moisture much better than true hardwood floors. With proper tools the average homeowner would be able to install a floating floor fairly easily.
So which wood floor is best for you? Only you can answer that question, but hopefully the information we have provided will help you make your decision and be able to choose the best ood floor for your home.