Laminate Wood Flooring, Laminate Flooring

Interested in going with a wood floor in your kitchen? Do you like the look of wood but you’re not sure whether it’s a good idea – you might be concerned about things like water damage?

You’re not alone. Many people love the look and feel of wood floors but think that it would be too big of a hassle to install them in the kitchen due to the inherent dangers. Exposure to water can cause warping or buckling, and the beautiful wood floor in your kitchen can quickly become… not so pleasant.

The great news is, however, that it can be a great option – and are even easier to maintain then other types of floors such as tile. There is never any dirty grout to clean, and they can easily be wiped down with a mop with a machine washable microfiber pad.

If you use a quality polyurethane finish, it can prove to be just as water-resistant as other floor types. These have a beautiful sheen but will require a refinish annually. Polyurethane finishes last a very long time and don’t need to be stripped, waxed, or buffed. With regular cleaning and dusting, you should be fine. Just be sure to look out for leaks – and fix the problem immediately if you find any. Something like a burst pipe can cause terrible damage if not discovered, so be on the look out.

Equally important is the type of wood that you choose – the kitchen is a high-traffic area and therefore certain species of wood floors work better in the kitchen than others. Cherry, fir, and pine wood are less durable types – ash, maple, or oak stand up better and are more durable, and will serve you well over the course of a lifetime. If you’re shopping flooring, let your installer know the room you plan to install it in – they may have some good suggestions about which choice to make.

In the end, if you’re careful, getting wood floor in the kitchen can be a great decision which can reward your home for years. It looks beautiful, and in most cases easier to walk on than tile, stone, or ceramic. A wood floor of a durable species (ash, maple, or oak) with a high-quality finish will last a very long time. Surface tension will prevent water from getting into small gaps, and the hardness is greater than tile. With real hardwood flooring, even if you dent it over the years a simple refinish can have your wood floor in the kitchen looking like new!

Green used to be a color. Nowadays, however, green does not refer to any one color – it comes in all colors. Green is a way of life. For some, going green means trading in a gas-guzzler for a hybrid. For others, green means taking almost as much time to sort the garbage as it did to make the garbage. In building and decorating, green means making adjustments to materials and methods used to construct homes and design interiors.

When it comes to flooring, there are many green alternatives: bamboo, natural linoleum, cork, carpeting and even concrete. However, you do not have to look to nontraditional flooring options. Wood, which has been used for years to beautify homes, has a prominent place on the list of green alternatives. Wood is a natural, hearty, renewable resource.

When shopping for green wood floors, you can either look for a floor made from sustainable flooring or think about using recycled, or ‘reclaimed’ wood floors. Sustainable flooring is made of wood that is grown in special wood ‘farms’ – forests planted specifically for this purpose and farmed with the environment in mind. Reclaimed wood, on the other hand, comes from older – sometimes antique – floors that have been removed or from homes that were torn down for development or other purposes. These floors can be hundreds of years old, and will serve for hundreds more years if properly cared for and treated.

Reclaimed wood is a fine example of the lasting power and versatility of wood flooring. If we lived in a perfect world, everyone would take great care of their wood floors – they would dry mop them every evening before going to bed, take care not to drop anything on them, pick up furniture instead of dragging it and leaving scratches or scuffs, and so on, and so on.

Wood floors can take a lot of punishment, but eventually they are going to show signs of wear. When that happens, you have two choices – get ready for some arduous, backbreaking work or call a local wood floor specialist. The refinishing process may take a few days and more than a few dollars, but the result will be worth it.

When choosing wood flooring to lay over underfloor heating, its important to check that the wood flooring has been kiln dried to humidity level 6-9 degrees centigrade, or it could result in the shrinkage and cupping. Engineered wood flooring is very good for laying over underfloor heating as its more stable to constant changes in temperature.

The first thing to consider is to make sure your underfloor heating supplier knows your planning to lay wood over the underfloor heating. The system will need to be set to make sure the surface temperature does not exceed 27 degrees centigrade, for this reason we would recommend specifiying a floor thermostat as well as the standard air thermostat and that the floor thermostat is set as the master control.

You must make sure the subfloor is correctly prepared i.e level, moisture checked etc. Once the underfloor heating has been fitted, you must run the heating for 3 weeks at normal room temperature to ensure the evaporation of latent humidity. If its summer and the room temperature is too high to activate the thermostat, then you will need to over ride the thermostat so that the heating comes on to warm the screed. We understand that it is not ideal in the summer months to have your heating on and that it could become quite uncomfortable but its very important to do this before laying any type of wood over it.

When you have had your heating on for 3 weeks, check the water temperature is set to 40-45 degrees centigrade which is normal for wood flooring, also check the floor thermostat is set to 27 degrees centigrade. It is now time to ACCLIMATISE your wood. You can do this by storing the wood in the room where is it to be fitted for 7-14 days. Its important to stack the wood in a maner to allow air flow around the boards, a criss-cross fashion is perfect. If your wood flooring is tightly packed only the outer boards will acclimatise.

The night before the floor is to be fitted, the heating should be turned down to allow the screed to cool, you should leave the heating turned down whilst the floor is being fitted. Once the floor is fitted and complete, you should turn up the heating by 1 degree a day until you reach normal running temperature.

When it’s time to update the look of your home, and you are considering going with a hard floor rather than carpet, don’t let wood flooring cost scare you into something that you really don’t want.

When you think about the maintenance of carpet versus wood, and the fact that you will have to replace the carpet more often than you would a wood floor, you can easily see that in the long run, wood flooring cost really isn’t that bad. In fact, even from the beginning, it’s very comparable to a high quality carpet and pad, and you will get many more years from the wood than you ever would from the carpet.

The ease of maintaining a wood floor is something else to consider. Wood flooring cost is actually lower than carpet in maintenance too. You simply sweep and mop as needed. You won’t go through nearly as many vacuum cleaners during the life of your floor, and you don’t have to hire someone to come in and clean when a simply mopping will do the trick. You don’t even need to buy cleaners to add to the mop water, most manufacturers of wood floors will tell you that a damp mop with only water does a beautiful job. To eliminate water spots, you can simply dry the floor or run over it with a dust mop once it’s good and dry.

Already you can see the savings between carpet and wood flooring cost. Now let’s take a look at installing it yourself versus hiring a professional to do the job for you. You may be amazed at what you are going to learn.

It is very unlikely that you have all the tools necessary to do the job. You will either have to either purchase or rent them. A professional installer already has everything he needs to do the job. You may have to take time off from work or waste hours of a vacation to get the job done. Every hour that you lose from work is just like paying that fee to somebody else. Not having your full vacation time can also be a bummer, but at least you’re not losing your pay, but you could be losing money if you had plans to go someplace, bought the ticket, and are stuck staying home to finish the project.

Finally, what if you make a mistake? That can get even more costly. If you aren’t absolutely sure that you know what you are doing every step of the way, it can be easy to make a costly blunder. Take the time and make the investment in a couple of good books, a video or two, and check out the internet for tips and tricks for flawless installation. Or, just the save the time and effort and have perfectly installed floors by hiring a professional to do the job for you. In the long run, you won’t see a big cost difference between doing it yourself and hiring someone to do the job for you.