What kind of floor do you recommend?

As far as your floor, here are some tips to get you on the right track from my home improvement site:

The Wood Flooring Cheat-Sheet by cityhammer.com

So you’ve chosen to do a wood floor in your house or apartment…congratulations, you’ve made a popular choice! In fact, wood flooring demand in the US is projected to grow to over 12 Billion square feet by 2011. But before you start ripping up your carpets, let’s break down the basic choices you’ll have to make.

Types of Wood Flooring
There are three basic types of wood flooring and you must determine the wear and tear you expect to inflict so you know how durable a product you need.

Solid Wood: This is the best selection for authenticity. Solid Wood flooring is made from the timber of hardwoods, or of spruce or hard pine. This product used to come unfinished, and once installed, was sanded and then finished on-site. These days, the product is pre-finished in a factory. The products that are pre-finished often come with a polyurethane finish that has added aluminum oxide or titanium dioxide. These metal oxide finishes are used in various types of floor coverings and increase the wear a hardwood floor can handle.
Synthetic Wood/ Laminate: This type of wood flooring is made with a fiberboard center and wrapped in high-pressure laminate. They can be installed easily but cannot be re-sanded or refinished. Instead, they are meant to be removed and replaced once they wear out. These types of wood floor usually come with a warranty and should last at least 25 years. This is not your daddy’s laminate, these products have come a long way even from a decade ago. While purists wouldn’t even consider this option, today’s laminates are made to be ultra-realistic with beveled edges, textured surfaces and almost unlimited choices in color. This is a product that won’t fade in sunlight, can withstand pets, spills and heavy foot traffic, and can be installed on almost any surface.
Engineered Wood: For many people, engineered wood represents a great compromise between durability and authenticity. Unlike synthetics or laminates, engineered wood is made of real wood. This is done by either using wood from different tree species or using the same wood in different grades stacked together in layers and glued together with heat and pressure. The advantages here are that warping is not a problem, this flooring can be installed either above or below ground, and if you buy a think enough, high-quality product, you can sand it down or screen it at least once or twice for a new finish.

The Look of Your Floor
No matter what type of flooring you’ve chosen, the manufacturers are going to provide plenty of choices in terms of both species, shape and color.

Species: Most New Yorkes don’t moonlight as lumberjacks or carpenters, but we know what we like aesthetically, and that’s what counts. You are basically making a decision based on how much or little “character” the wood has. We’re talking about the grain, the knots, the swirls etc. Walnut, for example has a lot of character. For a smoother look, oak or maple might be a better choice. Hickory, Ash, Beech, Birch and Pine are the most common as far as “American” styles and then there are the more exotic woods like Teak, Cork or Bamboo.
Shape: The two most popular layouts for a wood floor are parquet or planks. Parquet is very versatile and allows you the most design possibilities because they come in typically in 6” x 6” squares. More popular nowadays however are planks, which give your home more of a country look and feel. Most of these products come in boxes and within each box are planks of different lengths (some 1 foot long, some 4 feet long and so on). This variation will add to the genuine look you’re aiming for. Also, keep in mind you can have the width of these planks be 3 inch, 5 inch, etc. I would base this decision on the size of my rooms; the more space to fill, the wider the plank I’d use.
Color: What color you choose is almost entirely a question of personal taste but here are some guidelines to help you decide; The color of your furniture needs to be either in contrast or in the same family of brown, trying to match exact wood colors is impossible. Some wood has a honey-yellow tinge to it and other wood has a mahogany-reddish tone, so mind the timbre of your timber! Also determine whether your home is filled with light or tends to be a bit darker, and choose the darkness of your floor accordingly. A chocolate-brown tone can look great in a showroom, but if you don’t get much sunlight, it can transform your home into a pool of black if you go too dark.

Installation
How you lay the floor will depend on what surface it’s being laid on, what product you’ve chosen, and what the professional you have hired suggests. Basically you can go two ways: a floating installation, which uses the tongue and groove method, or a glue-down, which is self-explanatory. There are benefits and advantages of both methods and cityhammer.com strongly recommends that you get an expert opinion from a flooring pro on which is best for your situation.

So now you’re ready to shop for wood flooring. The fall is the busiest time for installers as everyone is looking to get their new floors down for company in the holiday season, so avoiding this time of year may save you money and time. Make sure to bring this cheat-sheet with you when you visit showrooms. Also, be sure to ask others when you visit their homes what they have installed so that you can see real-life examples of what you like and don’t like. This is a big decision, so do your homework…I know I wood!

Posted by: cityhammer at August 31, 2007 1:26 PM