Wood flooring

You have got two basic choices when it comes to wood flooring: solid timber or engineered timber floors. Each of those types comes unfinished or pre-finished. The flooring you will ultimately choose will depend on sever factors, including price, wood species, ease of installation, the type of subfloor and the room itselfe.

   Solid-wood flooring 

Solid timber flooring has been popular ever since dirt-floored Colonial-era cabins gave way to more populare homes. Even today, houses with timber floors sell faster and fetch higher price than homes without them. Solid timber flooring offers a multitude of design and finishing options, comes in many species and easily repaird and refinished. Plus, a properly maintained timber floors can last several generations.

Solid timber flooring is readily available in both unfinished and pre-finished varieties. Traditional unfinished harwood-strip flooring is the most popular timber floor installed today. It is affortable and attractive and you can choose to stain it any color you would like or leave it natural. However, unfinished wood requires sanding, staining (if desired) and the application of a clear topcoat finish.

Engineered timber flooring

Pre-finished engineered timber flooring was introduced in the mid 1980s and quickly become the moste popoular type of do-it-yourself timber floor. It is composed of three or more wood layers that are gued together into long planks. The wear layer starts from 2.5mm thick solid wood and up to 6mm which comes nearly two-dozen species. Laminated construction creates a floor that is much more dimensionally stable than solid timber flooring, so it is less likely to cup, split, shrink or warp.