Generally hardwood surfaces come ready-made, this is when the maker applies a finish at the factory. This finish is usually at least 4 layers of UV cured urethane resin. Hardwood flooring are generally easy to scrub with a simple cross of a dust mop or vacuuming. You'll need to guard your hardwood flooring from scratching as much as humanly possible. Putting protective rugs under your furniture is an excellent way to prevent scrapes on the floor. Hardwood surfaces are meant to last a life-time.

You are going to want to select a color of hardwood flooring that will emphasizes your house and home furnishings. As a rule softer tone colors go with country, contemporary and casual settings. Darker colored wood floors are for formal or standard interiors. naturally, anything goes! Your call should be primarily based on your visible preference.
Lighter wood would be a white ash, sugar maple or southern yellow pine. Darker colors are beech, birch, red oak, heart pine and mesquite.

You need to make sure that your hardwood floor will be able to bear denting and wear. Of the woods discussed above mesquite is the hardest wood, and a southern yellow pine would be the softest. In the middle of these fall the yellow birch, heart pine and beech.

If you're going to be hiring a handyman to install your hardwood flooring make sure you ask for references. Go have a look at a floor that he has put in. Make sure that he is comfy working with the type of word floor that you would like placed.

Make sure that you thoroughly check the hardwood flooring after the final placement. Glance at the floor from a vertical position and with ordinary lighting. The finish on your floor may not be that you would find on fine furniture. Deep swirls or sander marks or splotchy areas might mean that the floor was not finished properly. There will however be some differences on any wood floor. Nonetheless these irregularities will not seem obvious and will only add to the personality of the floor.

Charlie Keaton has been a contractor ( handymany Temecula ) for over 7 and has come across every imaginable problem. He likes to share information so that folks working on their homes have the right facts. If you’re in the Inland Empire and you need help, you can find him here: handyman Murrieta

As you enter the world of hardwood flooring you have many options. Engineered flooring is one of them. What is engineered flooring? Engineered hardwood flooring is composed of a hardwood “wear layer”, from 1/16″ to 3/16″ thick, laminated or glued to plywood. The plywood backing is assembled in a crossing pattern, usually of 3 or 5 plys. Then there is a thin layer of hardwood, which normally comes from waste material, or reclaimed wood. This is the catch, the thin layer on top is normally only 1/8″ which does not give you much wood on the surface to sand or refinish. Solid wood floors have an expected lifetime of approximately 100-120 years, as to where engineered flooring only about 5-10 years “IF” you get a good product than can be refinished more than once. With engineered flooring you take the risk of the wood delaminating from moisture, or from certain cleaning products you may use. Looks can be “deceiving” when looking through engineered products; they give you the look of solid hardwood but not the durability!

Labels, brand names and colors are often discontinued or changed in engineered flooring, leaving you in a dilemma if you ever have to replace for damage, or an addition to the room. Solid hardwood can be re-sanded and refinished several times to remove dents or deep scratches if needed, which makes it much more durable to the daily wear and tear of our family and our playful pets. With engineered wood flooring, you will have to live with some of those deep dents or scratches that come from everyday living. It is also easily found in the wood industry. ãEUREURMother Nature shows her magic with vibrate colors ranges in solid wood that we could never match with engineered flooring products.

Moisture issues are another factor you must consider on your flooring choice. Engineered products are made from laminating thin stock together, and you take a chance on it delaminating with moisture issues. This will make your flooring move apart, swell, and eventually have to be replaced. Laminated flooring is not good for bathrooms, kitchens or places with a lot of water for that reason.

Working with engineered flooring on the milling side of things is very hard to get perfection. The wood is very thin, making it harder to get the edges straight. They may be ridged, too making it hard to install and it can be uneven. Also something to think about is nearly every floor endures some separation between boards. If water gets down into the wood, it can cause it to cup, or rise off the floor or it can stain very easily from spills. If you can, train your family and friends to remove their shoes when they enter your home, then that would be ideal flooring option, but in reality that is not a logical choice. What is a good alternative to engineered flooring? Recycled hardwood flooring made of solid strips of lumber can be installed over concrete and resists the pressures from moisture. Like solid wood flooring, these products can be sanded and refinished for an even longer lifespan. There’s also cork flooring which offers a softer surface, but can wear faster overtime. Cork is a renewable material so it’s still a promising alternative. What’s the lesson here? Always do your homework. Before you shop around, gather your “pros and cons” to what will suit your flooring needs. Do not go by looks alone, see where your floor will take you in the future. You’ll be glad you took the time.

Discover more about recycled hardwood flooring and other engineered flooring alternatives.

Nothing adds warmth and value to a home like wood floors. Over 90 percent of real estate agents in a national survey said that homes with wood floors sell more quickly and for higher prices than other homes without wood flooring.

Some people shy away from hardwood flooring because they believe that they’re high maintenance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today’s specially formulated finishes are as tough as they are beautiful. Only occasionally will you want to do a thorough cleaning with a recommended wood floor cleaning solvent, and it’s well worth it to keep your wood floors in glowing good health.

Another concern many people have is that wood floors are somehow bad for the environment. Actually, wood floors are ecologically friendly. Recycled wood from old ships, barns and even old wood floors is highly prized for its “distressed” characteristics. Wood is also a good choice for allergy sufferers since its surface doesn’t collect dust, dander and other allergens.

There are many types and styles of wood floors and many types of wood can be used in them. The most common styles are:

· Strip – A floor made up of wood strips averaging 2″ in width. Strip flooring is ideal for small rooms as it makes the room seem larger than it actually is.

· Plank – Plank flooring uses larger wood boards ranging from 3″ to 6″ in width.

· Parquet – This popular style is made up of wooden pieces that combine to create an attractive pattern. The simplest parquet pattern is a 6″ x 6″ checkerboard design, but there is really no limit to how complex a parquet floor pattern can become.

Wood floors can be protected by a transparent varnish that lets the wood’s natural tint show through or they can be stained any color you like to complement any décor scheme. Over 50 different species of woods are used in wood flooring, including familiar domestic woods such as Pine, Oak, and Maple as well as more exotic woods like Bamboo, Mesquite and Teak. All of these woods vary in hardness and wear resistance, so consider the traffic patterns where they will be installed.

With all the flooring options available to the homeowner to consider, wood flooring remains a very popular choice. They’re more affordable than you might think, and they maintain their beauty and value as time goes by. As the expression goes, “It’s the wood that makes it good!”

Liz Smith writes about hardwood floors and other flooring for homedoctor.net
flooring ]]> http://designingorland.com/general-contracting/hardwood-floors-101/feed/ 0 http://designingorland.com/flooring/understanding-your-hardwood-flooring-selection/ http://designingorland.com/flooring/understanding-your-hardwood-flooring-selection/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:02:15 +0000 Orlando Designer http://designingorland.com/?p=9

As your old floor has become harder to clean, matted, and simply ready to give up, there is a practical alternative to restoring life back into the room. Hardwood floors add a certain type of warmth and style to any room that other floors can only try to imitate. But as you make the decision to install your hardwood floor, you must first understand how and why some types will last longer, are easier to install, and why it is a fitting choice for you.

Fortunately, hardwood floors are better produced with quality finishes and more advanced construction today than ever before because the consumer demand for them has increased.

There are three types of hardwood flooring: solid hardwood, engineered, and long-strip hardwood. Because solid hardwood is moisture-sensitive, it is not used directly over a concrete slab, but rather nailed down. There are many finishes that are available to recoat your beautiful solid hardwood floor over and over again which adds to their attractiveness for their long life span. Remember, some solid hardwood floors over 100 years old are still in thriving condition.

Engineered hardwood flooring is manufactured with sheets of wood laminated together after being stacked on top of each other to form one flexible strip of wood. Because engineered hardwood uses a cross-ply construction, it does not shrink and expand with humidity like solid hardwood does. Engineered floors of most types can be nailed down, glued, floated, stapled, and installed over concrete.

Longstrip plank floors have similarities to the engineered floors in that there are several wood strips glued together. One plank of longstrip is bigger and wider than the other types to give the appearance of multiple rows wide and several planks long. This type of floor is available in a wide variety of wood species and if damaged is easy to replace.

Understanding the hardwood flooring options will help you be a smarter shopper when it comes to the exciting time of replacing, remodeling, or adding value to your home.

Big Bobs Flooring (http://www.mybigbobs.com/) is a flooring outlet. Billings Farnsworth is a freelance writer.