The most commonly used hardwood for flowing
Many types of solid hardwood flooring exist. Among the popular species used for this purpose are the maple, white oak and the red oak. Of the three, the maple is the most durable. The white oak is next in hardness and the red oak is the softest.
The grain of the white oak used in solid hardwood flooring is long and more or less straight and it is often highlighted with a silver glow. The color of the wood becomes brownish with age so that the wood sometimes has a faintly gold glow. It can, if properly cared for, last for a thousand years or so.
Somewhat less durable than its cousin, the red oak used in solid hardwood flooring still lasts for several hundred years. The name of the wood comes from the pink to reddish brown color of its hardwood core, which is the dead portion of the wood and the one from which lumber is made.
The maple solid hardwood flooring is cream in color and may have spots of reddish brown. Its grain, rather than straight, is wavy. With age, the color of the maple assumes a golden tinge.
A solid hardwood flooring has its advantages
If you are planning to install solid hardwood flooring, it is best to stick to a species with a hardness of at least 1,000. This will ensure that the wood does not easily splinter or dent. Sometimes, cherry is used for floors but the species used is the wood taken from Africa. The species that is found in America is too soft for use as flooring.
The grade of the wood
The grade of the solid hardwood flooring is sometimes, but not always, stamped on one of its ends. Manufacturers often omit grading the wood because of the many variations of appearance and color that are possible with one set. Grade usually refers to the appearance of the wood, although it has something to do with the durability of the wood also. High grade lumber has patterns and colors identical with its companions and the highest grade is given to wood that has no markings and whose color is uniform. If you really want the best grade of solid wood flooring, look for the words ?clear? and ?select? on its grade stamp, if it has one.
The different cuts of solid hardwood flooring
A piece of solid lumber used in solid hardwood flooring is usually ? of an inch thick and its width can range from 2-1/4 inch to 6 inches. Some sets of lumber are cut in varying lengths. There is maximum and minimum length specified and all the pieces will vary within those dimensions. Random-length sets are usually arranged in checkerboard style.
Solid hardwood flooring can?t be used for the basement
Even if you have a base concrete floor and under lament in your basement, you can?t use solid hardwood flooring as the moisture of the basement will cause the expensive solid wood to rot. You should use engineered lumber instead. These are plywood style planks which have an extra layer of solid hardwood on top. Because of the cushion of thin pieces of wood, the solid top can withstand the unevenness of the floor and the moisture.
Using a subfloor, though, may be carried out in any room in the home, and this is a normal procedure when fitting a floating cork floor. With the subfloor being a base, and then building a secondary floor above that you could essentially have any type of flooring that suits you in nearly every room of the home. The only real kind of flooring that cannot be built upon his carpet, but if you have a concrete floor, or a hardwood floor, you are able to create a secondary floor above it after which fit something similar to cork tiles or another type of laminate flooring in order to affect the design of the floor itself, perhaps to a lighter wood and even to a darker one if that is the preference.