Hardwood flooring, though long considered a formal, more traditional approach, has undergone a renaissance in the last decade. Many people feel the look and longevity offered by hardwood flooring products, especially solid hardwoods, make the relative value one of the best available, and are installing wood on entire levels, throughout their homes. The average longevity of a solid hardwood floor can be as long as 80 years. Wood is also easy to clean, and for those with sensitivities to allergies, it is much less of a problem than carpet. Hardwood floors generally offer a higher resale value than carpet as well.
Solid hardwood is available in both pre-finished and unfinished varieties, in just about any species of wood known. From the “standard” red and white oak floor, to pine, walnut, maple, teak, and bamboo. Many can be found in widely varying widths and thickness. The pre-finished wood floor comes with a factory finish, which normally consists of five or more coats of baked-on polyurethane. When installing unfinished hardwoods, the planks are installed as is, then sanded onsite, custom stained and finished with an average of two to three coats of polyurethane.
As one might imagine the finish on the pre-finished floor is more durable than that of the product finished onsite. However, a big advantage of the finished onsite product is the fact that it is sanded with the wood on the floor. This allows some of the imperfections that may exists in the subfloor to be sanded out, as well as creating a contiguous surface on which to apply the finish. The end result is a floor that is smoother in feel and appearance.
Many pre-finished products are not solid, and are manufactured in layers, like the laminates, to address some of the limitations of solid wood. Pre-finished products which are not solid, and 1/2” or less in thickness, can be installed on concrete subfloors. The construction in layers allows this type of product to resist the normal amounts of latent moisture present in most concrete slabs, which the solid, and thicker products cannot do.
Several new ideas have come along in recent years in the hardwood flooring market and created what is actually an entire new class of flooring products, some of which even consist of very little actual wood product. These products are called laminates.
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