Changing the Epoxy flooring college station in your home can be a big step in a renovation project and something you’ll no doubt need to consider carefully. If you decide to opt for hardwood flooring, I’d highly recommend engineered flooring as opposed to solid wood flooring.
The overall look and feel of engineered flooring is identical to solid wood flooring, yet it is often cheaper, more durable and better for the environment. This is because it is made up of a thin layer of finished surface wood such as oak or walnut that is then fixed to a stronger plywood core.
Despite engineered flooring not having a majority of the hardwood flooring market share (although this is currently growing), there is already a wide variety of types on the market and the choice can be a bit daunting. Hopefully by the end of this article, you’ll make an informed decision and choose a floor you’ll be satisfied with for decades to come.
Before we get down to the aesthetics, it’s important to make sure that the engineered flooring you choose is physically suitable for the room of the house in which it will be fitted. The biggest factor in this is as you might expect water. Although tiled floors might be more common for bathrooms or utility rooms, certain varieties of engineered flooring are also suitable for wet areas such as bathrooms if properly fitted.
Most engineered floors are not suitable for wet areas however so it’s important to check the details of the flooring on the retailers website. Engineered flooring suitable for bathrooms tends to be multi ply flooring meaning that the cores of the flooring planks are made of multiple plywood layers (usually 11). However, these multi ply floors tend to be more expensive than 3 ply engineered flooring. Multi ply flooring also tends to more often be suited for load bearing floors although you still need to check on the retailers website to be certain.
The species of timber used in the hardwood wear layer is the most significant aesthetic choice about your new engineered flooring as it dictates the colour and graining of the floor’s surface.
Oak is still the most common timber species used in hardwood flooring due to its low cost and neutral wood colour and graining. However due to the fact that engineered flooring only uses a few millimetres of the desired timber on the surface, people can afford to have more luxurious timber species on their floors. For example there’s been a growing trend in the use of American Black Walnut in engineered flooring as well as exotic species such as Jatoba and Tali.
Once you’ve decided on a timber species for your floor, the next step is to decide what grade you’d like it to be. The grade of timber basically refers to its quality based on the level of knots, summer growth and other ‘flaws’ such as mineral streaks. However, this comes down to personal taste and if you’re trying to a achieve a cosy ‘country cottage’ feel with your new floor, you’d be better off going for the cheaper Rustic grade timber with its characteristic knots and colour variations. Timber of a Select grade is the most expensive and will contain less flaws and have a more uniform colouration. A Select grade hardwood floor can be great if you’re trying to create a minimalistic, contemporary living space.
The finish is, as the name might suggest, the final thing you need to consider for your new engineered floor. The finish refers to how the surface of the flooring has been treated to give it a distinctive appearance. A common finish that is performed on nearly all hardwood flooring is a brushed finish. The timber is abraded with a wire roller brush to remove the soft summer growth and leave a textured surface that follows the grain. It is also common to distress the surface of the flooring to make it appear aged. The timber can be fumed to giver a less vibrant, grey colouration or hand scraped to give the impression of a restored antique floor.
