Hardwood Flooring

HARDWOOD SPECIES

Choosing a hardwood floor for your home is a signature of your style, warmth and luxury. Hardwood floors add value to your home and are an excellent selling point for home resale if maintained well. Hardwood flooring has variation and character because it is created by using material directly from nature.

Domestic: The most common domestic species include red and white oak, American cherry, hickory, maple, ash and American Walnut. U.S. softwoods include cedar, fir, hemlock, pine, redwood, spruce and cypress.

Exotic: Are hardwood species are not found in North America. Exotic hardwood floors offer a unique and visually striking appearance that is distinctly different from the North American hardwoods. Examples of exotic hardwood species, like Brazilian walnut, Brazilian cherry, Asian walnut and Santos mahogany are much harder than domestic hardwoods.

Solid Hardwood Flooring: Solid wood floors are one solid piece of wood throughout the whole body of the hardwood. They are generally milled to 3/4″ thick and can be nailed or stapled to wood sub-floor . Because they will expand and contract as one solid piece, they are generally less dimensionally stable than their engineered counterpart, and therefore more susceptible to humidity and climate changes.

Engineered Hardwood Flooring: Engineered hardwoods include several layers of real wood that are plied together to create the body of the plank with a real hardwood veneer on the top layer. They require the same care and maintenance of solid hardwood, since both are organic products. Engineered hardwood is becoming the leading choice for pre-finished hardwood installations. The cross–ply construction makes them more dimensionally stable than their solid counterparts.

Pre-finished Hardwood Flooring: Pre-finished hardwood is clearly the way of the future for wooden flooring. For homeowners with an active family life, pre-finished hardwood flooring is an excellent choice. Pre-finished flooring is manufactured from both solid and engineered woods but, in both cases, it is completely finished before it leaves the factory and heads to the job site for its installation.

Unfinished Hardwood Flooring: Unfinished wood of any species that has been milled into form. It’s usually a solid wood, but also available in engineered varieties. This would be installed in your home and then sanded, stained and finished on site.