A Guide to Hardwood Floor Installation
Let’s first talk about the amount and type of space that you would like hardwood flooring on. Wooden flooring suits most kind of spaces including homes and offices. Owing to their expensiveness, not everyone can afford to install hardwood in every room of their house despite wanting to. In such a case, one can go for hardwood flooring in the most important and most frequented room of one’s place and opt for cheaper flooring alternatives in other rooms.
After deciding the area of your house that you would want to use wooden flooring on, you need to decide the type of wooden blocks that would constitute the flooring. There are three varieties available in the market: plank, strip and parquet designs. While planks are at least three inches wide, strips are available in width measuring between 1-1/2 inches and 3-1/4 inches. Parquet designs are usually offered in standard size of 6×6” and can be installed in a variety of geometric patterns. Oak flooring would be an excellent choice for the material. It is resilient and elegant at the same time.
After selecting the type of flooring, you will have to choose among the large number of grades wooden flooring comes in as well as the finish of the wood. While the hardwood grade would determine the color of your flooring and therefore its overall appearance, the finish would determine the longevity of your flooring. The options in the finish are surface finish and penetrating finish. Both have their pros and cons but generally penetrating finish is costlier than surface finish.
This will have to be followed by browsing the different brands that offer hardwood flooring options like Anderson Hardwood Floors, Columbia Flooring, Shaw Hardwood Floors, Mohawk Hardwood Floors, etc. Browsing through the range of products and the respective prices online will greatly help you in deciding the brand that would give you the best deal.
Now comes the installation of the selected type and grade of the flooring. You should preferably hire an expert for the installation so that the end result comes out to be perfect. Since wood is affected by changes in humidity and temperature, gaps need to be left between the floor and the walls to allow expansion. Such factors can only be taken care of if you hire a professional to do the job.
There are also other options for covering your floors to help protect against scratches and maintain a clean shiny finish. You can install area rugs if you want or leave the floor bare. If you decide to install rugs, you must really consider going for 9 X 12 area rugs as these look really good and stylish. They fill the room nicely while offering adequate protection for the wood. If you just want to protect certain areas or add style consider using accent rugs such as oval rugs or a stylish red rug♠.