Why choose hardwood flooring over other flooring systems?
Hardwood flooring has a natural beauty that will give any room a very warm feeling. When building a new home, adding an addition or just taking up old carpeting that doesn’t have a hardwood floor beneath, you should look at the wide variety of wood flooring available. Unlike carpet, 3/4″ thick wood flooring can take wear and tear and last well over 100 years with minimum maintenance (see our maintenance FAQs). When the surface finish wears, or gets scratched over time, you can recoat or sand and refinish the floors to make them new...
read moreIs hardwood flooring more expensive than carpeting?
A high quality wall-to-wall carpet often costs more than hardwood flooring products. Looking at flooring as a purchase that will last for generations with proper maintenance, it is clearly a better value. Once hardwood flooring is laid down it doesn’t require expensive steam cleaning and may only need an inexpensive re-coating after a generation of use (depending on maintenance and wear and tear). Comparing this to carpeting which needs expensive deep cleaning every year or two and replacing after only a few years, hardwood is...
read moreWhat is prefinished flooring and is it right for me?
The major difference between prefinished and site-finished flooring is the custom, tabletop look you get with a site-finished floor. Prefinished often has those gap-grooves between each strip, which some folks find unsightly. site finished = TABLE TOP prefinished = gaps and some unevenness. A lot of hardwood flooring sold today is prefinished. That is, several coats of UV-cured polyurethane are applied at the factory. These factory finishes are tough and durable. Installing a prefinished floor eliminates the time, the dust and the odors...
read moreWhy does my floor have cracks/gaps in it?
In is common for cracks to appear in floors, especially with wider planks, due to shrinkage and expansion over the year. Small cracks are not harmful to the floor and most will only appear seasonally due to changes in moisture levels. In order to reduce or eliminated the chances of getting cracks in your floor, make an effort to maintain a humidity level between 45% and 55% throughout the year. Air conditioning or a de-humidifier in the humid summer months and a humidifier during drier seasons helps to keep the humidity level more stable year...
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