Hardwood

Hardwood flooring is like a piece of fine furniture in your home. It gives a luxurious feeling that exudes warmth and gives a quality appearance that makes your flooring a timeless addition to your home. Your wood flooring will only become beautiful with time, and more valuable.

There are so many factors to consider when choosing the right hardwood for you, and today's state of the art technology only provides more options. Color, texture, grain and plank size are just a few options to think about when looking to transform your space. Come in today and let our fashion flooring experts help you select a hardwood from our top of the line manufacturers, Mohawk ®, Lauzon ®, Garrison ®, Columbia ®, Homelegend ®, that fits your style, budget, and all your household needs!

The Character of Hardwood

Many factors define the look of natural hardwood flooring. Species of the tree, where it grew, rate of growth, part of the tree used--they all determine your flooring's unique "character marks". The closer a plank is cut to the center of the tree, the darker its overall tone. Lighter boards came from closer to the bark, and knots indicate that a limb grew from that spot. The grain rings you may see on planks are called growth rings, and their size and pattern is determined by climate trends and mineral/nutrient absorption. While all these "character marks" impact the appearance of finished boards, they do not affect their strength.

The hardness of a wood is determined by species, with wood like Brazilian Walnut and Cherry, Santos Mahogany, and Hickory being some of the hardest. Some of the softer species include Birch, Oak, Chestnut, and Ash. The hardness of wood is determined by the Janka ® scale that utilizes Northern Oak as a base line of 1350. Brazilian Cherry for example is rated 2600, almost double the hardness of oak.

Solid vs Engineered?

Engineered is actually produced with three to nine layers of hardwood. Each layer is stacked in a cross-grain configuration and bonded together under heat and pressure. As a result, engineered wood flooring is less likely to be affected by changes in humidity and can be installed at all levels of the home. Engineered flooring is the recommended flooring for high-humidity states, such as Florida.

Solid, like it sounds, is milled from a single 3/4" thick piece of hardwood. Because of its thickness, a solid hardwood floor can be sanded and refinished over several generations of use. One of the characteristics of solid wood flooring is that it expands and contracts with changes in your home's relative humidity.

All wood species will expand and contract with temperature and or humidity levels in your home. With either solid/ engineered flooring, our installers compensate for this movement by leaving an expansion gap between the floor and the wall. Base molding or quarter round is traditionally used to hide the extra space.