Best Engineered Wood Flooring – Advantages Over Other Flooring Material
Most types of flooring materials can be used in the home. Indeed, although it may not be common, carpeting could be used in the kitchen and wood flooring could be used in the bathroom or toilet. But there are a number of reasons why people choose to use some materials in certain rooms over others. This article will list some of the best engineered wood flooring features that make it a versatile flooring for most rooms.Engineered wood flooring is effectively a material that will give the impression that you have solid hardwood flooring installed. It is primarily marketed as a cheaper option to hardwood flooring that will have the same aesthetic look as the hardwood.
So if you want the look of oak flooring in your dining room, you could go for a pre-finished, engineered wood flooring that has a top veneer of oak. Unlike traditional hardwood flooring a pre-finished oak flooring does not need to be covered. It is also more adaptable to the room and easier to install.
Engineered wood flooring is normally a laminate of three layers of wood. The top layer is a veneer of popular hardwoods like oak, pine, maple, beech and many others. The other layers are often made of materials like plywood.
The layers are glued together with the grains of each wood perpendicular to the others woods. Engineered wood flooring produced in this way is durable and does not expand or contract in changing climates or conditions like flooring made of one type of wood..
This type of flooring is also produced for ease of use. It comes in plank or strip flooring varieties and can be installed by gluing, stapling or as a floating floor on some form of underlay. Instructions on how to install the flooring come with the product and are aimed at DIYers.
In terms of benefits over traditional hardwood, the engineered variety will be cheaper and easier to install. They may not have the durability of a solid wood floor but are still sturdy enough to withstand heavy wear and tear.
In fact, if the flooring becomes marked or stained it can be sanded down. However, the sanding cannot go any deeper than the top veneer or the plywood lower layer will show. This is an advantage over a laminate flooring that might have the same look as a hardwood but will have a man made material as the top layer.
Kitchen Remodeling – Color Coordination Critical
We would like to write about the importance of ensuring that the colour of the different materials used in a kitchen actually complement each other; in other words, colour coordination is just as important in the kitchen as it is in any part of the home.
Now, it was recommended to us by almost everyone in ‘the business’ to start both the materials selection and the primary colour for the kitchen with the flooring. So that is what we did. We had previous homes with just a little hardwood flooring which had been a very light shade. With the back of our home facing a forest we wanted to have a dark brown hardwood floor to help bring the forest into our home and to give that richness which only dark hardwood can give.
Next, we needed to decide if we wanted the counter top or the cabinets to be the focal point of the kitchen. Once we saw the pricing of the solid wood cabinetry, we decided on the counter tops. Our kitchen designer suggested we coordinate all three in our decision making……the flooring, cabinets and counters. He recommended that since we had our hearts set on dark hardwood flooring we go with a dark counter top and light cabinetry. This would make the kitchen ‘pop’.
We brought into our next meeting with our kitchen designer a sample of the hardwood we had ordered. We also of course brought in colour samples of the paint which would go on the kitchen and family room walls as well as the paint chip sample for that which would also go in the hallways adjacent to the kitchen.
Since our hardwood was a Jatoba Expresso we felt that the matching counter top should also be a very dark brown and settled on the Coffee Brown quartz counter top.
Next, to make the counter top ‘pop’ we went with an off white, or to be more precise, Tuscan Canvas cabinetry. This is an MDF (Medium Density Fiber board) product which is an engineered wood product formed by breaking down softwood into wood fibers and combining it with wax and resin to form panels by applying very high temperatures and pressure during the manufacturing process.
We felt that this type of cabinetry would be a very nice complement to the flooring and counters which would remain the visual focal point of the kitchen.
For the sinks we had a decision to make based on our choices to date: brushed nickel sink or a type of sink to match the cabinetry. We chose the latter.
The back-splash was selected to be similar in colour to the cabinetry and thereby would also complement, not detract, from the darker colours as can be seen in the above picture.
The same approach was taken for the brushed nickel cabinet handles, in that all of the taps in the kitchen were also brushed nickel. We chose cabinet handles which were sufficiently thin to blend into the background.
Lastly, don’t forget that the kitchen does not exist in isolation to the rest of the house. The colours and shades of the paint in the adjacent rooms / hallways should also blend in with the kitchen’s colour scheme. For us, we have a earthy tone to the colours in our home, so there was a nice match all around.
We hope you have enjoyed our take on coordinating the colours within the kitchen.
Vinyl Plank Flooring – A Less Expensive Substitute For Hardwood Floors
One of the best things that can be said for vinyl plank flooring or any kind of vinyl flooring is that it is extremely easy to install. What is also especially nice about vinyl plank flooring compared to the more traditional vinyl designs and styles available is that it was specifically designed to look like real hardwood flooring – and like other vinyls, it is actually more resistant to water and other kinds of moisture penetration than hardwood or even bamboo.
Vinyl plank flooring is very different from anything you are likely to see in many stores and schools today. No longer do you need to stick to the staid old geometrical designs of yesteryear: instead, you can provide your rooms with a look that truly adds a new dimension to any renovation or remodeling works that you are carrying out.
Installing the vinyl plank system takes a much shorter period of time compared to using real wood planks. Generally you will find that you can install this kind of flooring within a matter of hours rather than taking a number of days, especially if you have never laid real wood flooring before. And because it is waterproof, it is a great solution for providing a room such as the kitchen or bathroom with a real wood look, but at half the cost and without the worries of the floor becoming damaged through water getting into it.
Unlike more traditional forms of vinyl flooring such as sheets or tiles, this style comes in long rectangular pieces that look just like any other kind of wood plank. You must keep in mind of course that they do not come with the same thickness that you would find with hardwood or bamboo flooring. Because it comes in planks rather than squares or other geometrical shapes, this helps to add to the illusion that what you have is real wood flooring. Each plank is usually 3 inches wide by 36 inches long and if you install it in a staggered fashion then you will find that it results in an even better approximation of the look of wood plank flooring.
Vinyl plank flooring comes in 20 different types of wood grain and color and some are coated with a satin urethane finish which provides better protection against dirt and scuffing. Each plank has been micro-ground using only the best precision equipment available, so once installed the floor acquires a really seamless look. This in turn only adds further to the illusion of it being real wood – without the cost or hassle that you would normally associate with the installation of any kind of hardwood flooring.