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by IronRodArt – Royce Bair

Wood Floor Cleaning Product Tips

How many times have you entered a store searching for the perfect wood floor cleaning product and once you arrived at the proper aisle, you were floored to see the vast selection of products on the market for cleaning your wood floors? Which should you pick, the cheap one, the expensive one? Who knows?

The Evolving Wood Floor

Wood flooring was made popular a long, long time ago. Around the turn of the century wood flooring was just about the only type of flooring found in homes. There is nothing better than to purchase an older home, rip up the carpeting, and only hope that beautiful natural wood floors are beneath it. So many consumers are searching for that perfect wood flooring, whether it is a natural wood, or laminate wood flooring.

What to Avoid When Cleaning a Wood Floore

The secret to a beautiful, wood floor is never, ever use water on the floor. If water is spilled it should be wiped up immediately to prevent damage to your wood floor. There are hundreds of wood floor cleaning products. Your job is to read the label. Find out what’s in that product. Most wood floors have a finish on them, usually a urethane coating. Never use a wax or waxed based product on your wood floor. You can use a cleaner/polisher to enhance the finish of your wood flooring. Using a polishing mop with a soft material such as terry cloth is recommended to ensure a polished look to your wood floors.

Taking Preventative Measures

Of course the first step in floor care is preventative maintenance. To maintain your wood floor’s natural beauty and finish you should use carpet rugs in high traffic areas and around sinks. These rugs will need to be vacuumed often, so that dirt does not collect beneath them onto your wood floors. High heals should not be worn on wood floors as they could potentially dent them. Keeping your pets nails trimmed will also result in less scratching. Along with this, never slide furniture across your wood floors when moving your furniture around. Place a carpet rug underneath the legs of the furniture before moving. It is also recommended to place protector pads underneath legs of all furniture.

The best preventative maintenance is to keep your floors clean of debris. Whether you sweep, dust or vacuum your wood floors, keeping them dirt free is the key. Using a soft duster is one of the best options for keeping a wood floor clean. Dust mops are perfect for pet hair, lint and dust and should be used daily on your wood floors, along with a gentle cleaning product that will clean your floor as you dust. A clean floor leads to a happy home owner. Keep the overall beauty of your wood floors by taking the time to find out exactly what it is you are putting on those beautiful wood floors.

Author Vincent Platania represents the Fuller Brush Company.

Fuller Brush has been in business since 1906, and offers safe, environmentally friendly products for keeping your home and your body clean.

Visit http://www.fuller-brush-products.com

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by tanakawho

Wood Flooring – Everything You Need To Know

The elegant look of a hardwood floor can add warmth and character to any room in a home. The natural characteristics of wood add depth and a visual appearance that many other types of floors try to duplicate. With the demand for hardwood flooring growing manufacturer’s are enhancing their ranges to meet this demand, with better quality finishes and superior construction techniques.

Hardwood floors come in a wide variety of wood species, colours and widths. Besides the classic hardwoods (like red oak, white oak, maple and ash) many manufacturers now offer exotic hardwood species from all over the World. Exotic hardwoods give homeowners the chance to better express their own personal decorating tastes with a more unique looking floor. With so many different types of hardwood flooring now available it is sometime hard to choice which is best suited to you.

Different Types of Wood Flooring

Solid wooden floors are one solid piece of wood that have tongue and groove sides and come in either pre-finished or unfinished styles. Solid wood floors are sensitive to moisture and it is not recommended to install these floors below ground level, or directly over a concrete slab. These floors are for nail-down installations only. You can refinish, or recoat solid wood floors several times, which adds to their appeal and to their long life. There are solid floors that are over 100 years old and are still in good condition.

All solid wood floors will react to the presence of moisture. In the winter heating months, moisture leaves the wood causing the floor to contract which leaves unsightly gaps between each plank. In the summer months when the humidity is higher the wood will expand and the gaps will disappear. If there is too much moisture it may cause the wood planks to cup, or buckle. This is why it is important when installing a solid strip floor to leave the proper expansion area around the perimeter and to acclimatize the wood prior to installation.

Engineered wood floors – These floors are constructed from several wood plies that are glued together. The centre core is generally a softer wood material and is used to make the tongue and groove. A hardwood finish layer is glued on top of the centre core and another softer wood ply is attached underneath the core. This top ply is also called the finish layer and can be constructed of almost any wood specie.

Wood always wants to expand in a certain direction. In the presence of moisture solid wood planks will always expand across the width of the planks, rather than down the length of the boards. To avoid this problem, manufacturers of engineered planks place each ply in the opposite direction of each other. This is called cross-ply construction. Once the wood layers are glued together the plies will counteract each other which will stop the plank from growing or shrinking with changes in the humidity. Engineered wood floors are designed for the floating installation and can be glued together or some now come with a click system.

Veneer wood floors are very similar to laminate floors. The only difference is that with a veneer flooring to top wear layer is a thin piece or real hardwood instead of a photographic image as in laminates. Veneer flooring is usually around 8mm in thickness with the top hardwood layer being around 0.7mm. Advantages of a veneer floors are that they are fast and easy to install and you have a real hardwood floor.

Factory Pre-finished Wood Flooring

Most factory finished hardwood floors have several coats of finish applied to the wood’s surface. As example, many wood floor companies are applying 6-10 coats of a ultra-violet (UV) cured urethane. This would be extremely difficult for someone to duplicate on a job site finish, not to mention how many days it would take. This is one of the reasons why many flooring mechanics, flooring retailers, and builders are pushing pre-finished hardwood floors. Instead of taking several days to install and finish a new hardwood floor a pre-finished hardwood floor is generally done in one day.

The most common finishes are:

UV-cured – Factory finishes that are cured with Ultra Violet lights versus heat.

Polyurethane – A clear, tough and durable finish that is applied as a wear layer.

Acrylic-urethane – A slightly different chemical make up than Polyurethane with the same benefits.

Aluminium Oxide – Added to the urethane finish for increased abrasion resistance of the wear layer, which is becoming extremely popular on the better grade wood floors.

Acrylic Impregnated – Acrylic monomers are injected into the cell structure of the wood to give increased hardness and then finished with a wear layer over the wood.

Unfinished Wood Flooring

If you want a custom stained hardwood floor, or a wood floor to match existing trim than a unfinished hardwood floor is your answer. Unfinished means you start with a bare hardwood floor and than the floor is sanded, stained, and finished in the home. This can be quite a mess and the process does take several days, but your floor will have a finish to you requirements.

Installation Options

Nail Down – Secret nails are used with a wood flooring nailer and mallet to attach the flooring to the sub floor. Solid Strip floors or Plank floors can only be installed on wooden sub-floors or on batons.

Glue Down – Engineered wood floors and parquets can be glued down. This is when you spread the recommended glue all over the sub floor and lay the flooring into the glue.

Floating – This is when a thin underlay is placed between the wood flooring and the sub floor. A recommended wood glue is then applied in the tongue and groove of each plank to hold the planks together. Engineered

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by Chris Campbell

Wood Flooring. Reclaimed Vs. Old Growth Wood. Northern Va, Antique/Reclaimed Wood Floor Specialists. Madera Floors

In the wood flooring industry, the term ‘old growth’ continues to be the subject of interpretation and controversy. At Madera Floors we make it our business to know more about wood than any other company, and to educate our customers so that they can make more informed purchasing decisions. We frequently address questions about ‘old growth’ trees, especially in relation to reclaimed timber. In fact, we have talked with many consumers who thought the terms meant the same thing and were misled into thinking their old growth flooring was the same as our antique reclaimed flooring. Here we define some of the terms and address questions surrounding the mystery of ‘old growth’.

Old Growth refers to established forests that, up until the time trees are cut, have had little or no disruption. Advocates of cutting old growth timbers suggest that pruning selected trees is good for the forest. We disagree. Old growth forests maintain themselves through a natural process that does not include cutting into the delicate fabric woven by nature.

How Old is “Old” Growth? The actual age that determines “old” growth varies depending on the specie, but it refers to the age at which a tree has reached its maturity. For an eastern white pine, it is between 130-150 years, while many of the hardwoods reach maturity at 80 years. But, what is most important is that at maturity and thereafter the old growth tree is still contributing to the ecosystem in which it lives.

Virgin Growth refers to dense stands of various species of hardwood or pine trees that are indigenous to their habitat; they have never been harvested. Many virgin forests are protected, but tragically there are also many that are still being cut today for purposes that include mass-produced wood flooring. Essentially, virgin timber is old growth that has never been cut, while old growth may or may not be virgin timber.

Reclaimed Wood is also referred to as Antique wood, and for us the terms are interchangeable when describing the wood we use to make our floors. We agree that old growth flooring is beautiful; however, we prefer to reuse this majestic timber that was originally cut to build structures that have shaped our history in the United States and in interesting places all over the world.

“Deconstruction” is the core of the reclaimed wood industry. The emphasis is on utilizing materials that have outlived their usefulness and would otherwise be demolished, discarded or left to decay. Deconstruction helps to close the resource loop that we now realize is so valuable in this world of finite resources.In recycling this precious material there is a significant positive environmental impact.

Deconstruction differs from ‘demolition’ in that it is a painstaking process involving the selective dismantlement of building components. We work with experts who carefully manage dismantling projects to preserve the grand dimensions of the beams, posts and floor joists; this will be reflected in your floor as we work to maintain the superior widths and lengths of these ancient timbers.

Demolition, on the other hand, is unfortunately the more common method of taking down a building. Implosion or ‘wrecking-ball’ style demolition is relatively inexpensive and offers a quick method of clearing sites for new structures. Consequently this process results in significant waste and unusable material.

For more information please visit our website at

www.maderafloors.com or our blog www.maderafloors.blogspot.com

Thanks

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