An introduction to wooden flooring products

Solid Wood Flooring
Doesn't actually need an explanation, it's a solid lump of wood, from your tree! Solid hardwood flooring looks and feels great but it's not for all.
It's a natural product and therefore has a few characteristics which need mentioning. All timber once felled will continue to answer its environment when it comes to moisture levels. Higher humidity = expansion, lower humidity = contraction when you have an environment the location where the humidity fluctuates significantly you ought to think seriously before installing solid wood flooring. Older properties with less effective damp proofing, kitchens Boston MA and bathrooms can all potentially make trouble as can newly built houses with residual moisture in concrete floors. If you are in almost any doubt we would recommend finding a local flooring specialist to perform a quick moisture test. Under-floor heating may also pose significant problems to solid wood flooring and as an over-all rule of thumb, we may discourage our customers from installing wooden over under-floor heating.

What about deterioration? Solid wood will mark. Period. If you're acquiring stressed about dings and scratches forget it. Unless you want to put socks on the dogs and earn your house guests wear slippers! It's an organic product and may produce a 'patina' after a while. Personally I love rustic grade timber, as it's starts out a little less than perfect and includes a great, warm, lived in feel with it and you won't get stressed in the event the dog skids in chasing the kitty or your child drops metallic toy, life's too short to get stressed!!
Parquet Flooring
This appears like a good point to share with you parquet flooring. Parquet or block flooring is generally installed by sticking oak blocks in the regular pattern, typically herringbone to some solid floor. The installation of block flooring should just be attempted by full competent people who have access to specialist tools. We do not recommend the DIY approach!
Engineered wood flooring
Engineered, what? Don't worry, nobody has ever encountered engineered wooden flooring. So here goes, prepare to be enlightened. It's basically a layer of hardwood bonded to some softwood base. The bottom line is it's going to look and feel like wooden but you will use it over under-floor heating plus areas which are not suitable for solid wood installations. It comes in a traditional tongue and groove (think nailed down floorboards) and floating or click system similar to laminate flooring. So it actually is incredibly versatile, it uses much less expensive of the raw natural resource that is no bad thing also it can be as fast to lay like a click system laminate. We recommend the usage of engineered flooring to all or any of our customers.
So it's perfect, right? Well don't forget the top layer continues to be real wood so that you will need to remember the wear points highlighted in the wood section.
Laminate flooring
OK, this really is easy as most people know about laminates. They are manufactured by bonding a photo, basically an image onto a softwood base. An ultra stong surface might be applied. They come in endless styles and colours and will be fitted by you aren't reasonable ability. Some laminates feature a 50 year domestic use guarantee which offer you some idea how hard wearing they are. So if you have a busy house or else you want some of the slightly more 'out there' designs they really are an incredible choice.