Hardwood

/Flooring/Hardwood
Hardwood flooring simply beautiful

Hardwood flooring is natural choice its beauty enhances your home and adds warm to any room.

Shopping for hardwood can be confusing. Listed below are some key words to help you navigate the world of hardwood, but don’t worry; we will make sure you have the proper education to make the right choice for you!

Prefinished Hardwood:

Prefinished wood floors have their protective coat applied at the factory under controlled conditions and in the ideal environment for proper drying and curing. Factory applied urethane finishes are much tougher and longer lasting than site-applied finishes, and last longer than site-finished floors–typically 5 to 35 years. With prefinished flooring, you get the additional option of choosing boards with square edge and ends or those with slight beveling, which makes individual planks more noticeable.

Advantages of Prefinished Hardwood Flooring
  • Quicker installation: flooring arrives already sanded and finished
  • No drying or curing time required – floors are ready to walk on immediately after installation
  • No toxic fumes or strong odors are produced during installation, or dust from sanding
  • No need to relocate family during finishing step
  • Factory finishing produces a harder, more durable surface, making prefinished floors a better choice for
  • high traffic areas
  • Prefinished floors come with a manufacturer’s warranty against board defects
  • The selections of design ideas are grander than sand and finish

Engineered Hardwood:

In the East Bay Area most of the subfloors are concrete. Engineered Hardwood is the perfect choice. Some wonder if it is real hardwood, the answer is yes, and it is more stable than solid wood. Engineered wood is formed with three to five layers of hardwood. Each layer is stacked in a cross-grain configuration and bonded together under heat and pressure, this helps with expansion and contraction from different weather. The layers work to keep moisture from rising up and damaging the top layer.

Tips for finding the best engineered hardwood for you! 
  • As you shop for engineered hardwood make sure look at the wear layer, you pay for what you get. If you want a floor you can sand down in the future make sure you have a thick wear layer.
  • Hand Scraped floors will never need to be sanded and refinished, to spruce them up you can have them lightly abraised and have a new coat of finish applied.
  • When choosing a floor, shiny looks sleek and beautiful; it definitely goes with a modern look. Just know it shows every crumb especially if light is reflecting off of it.
  • A medium shade is always a safe bet. Ever notice how hard it is to keep a black car clean? It is the same thing with flooring.

Solid Hardwood:

Solid wood flooring is 100% hardwood milled from lumber. As a natural material, hardwood reacts to changes in its setting, like moisture and extreme temperatures, which cause solid wood to shrink or expand. All solid hardwood can be sanded and refinished if needed over the years. Solid hardwood is not recommended for installation over concrete slabs.

Sand & Finish Hardwood:

Sand and Finish hardwood is raw wood that is installed and then finished on site. The benefits to this choice are a mirror like look, seams that are smooth, and sealed. First you chose the species of hardwood, the width of the plank, stain color, and finish type.

Tips for finding the best sand and finish hardwood for you! 
  • A medium shade is always a safe bet. Ever notice how hard it is to keep a black car clean? It is the same thing with flooring.
  • Floors with a lot of grain and variation will help hide wear.