As soon as you’ve chosen the very best floor to fit your requirements and budget, you will want to think about which wooden floor fitting method to use. Regardless of if your floor is solid or **engineered, then it is important to choose a suitable fitting approach to suit the floor and the conditions. We’ve created this guide to assist you either set up the floor yourself or to function as an aide memoire if you would like to talk about the options with a professional fitter.
- Glue-down – Glue-down setup entails using a bonding agent or adhesive, which can be implemented directly on to the subfloor and can be applied to concrete or wooden subfloors. If you’re placing over a concrete subfloor that you will initially need to put a two part epoxy damp proof membrane to ensure no moist rises up to your brand new floor. A Glue-down installation can be quite secure when performed correctly, although you do need to allow a fantastic amount of time prior to walking in your own flooring. The adhesives used in this process need to bond to the floor, and can be quite messy if performed by a less skilled installer. Another important consideration in selecting glue-down setup is your choice of adhesives as some are just suitable for flooring till a particular width. To steer clear of warranty issues, we provide Kerakoll Silovil Flex, which permits you to install floors with widths of up to 220mm.
- Nail-down – Nail-down installment is the most straightforward of solid wood floor installation methods but is only advised if you’ve got a wooden subfloor. When installing plywood the path you decide to lay the planks doesn’t matter. However, if you are likely to nail down a new floor over existing floorboards you must face the planks of the new flooring in the contrary direction to the present floorboards, basically making a criss-cross pattern. This is done in order to ensure stability and prevent the risk of warping or buckling. Solid wood floors can also be thicker; therefore they need to be nailed down in order to stay in place.
- Staple-down – Staple-down setup is very similar to nail-down, just staples are used instead of nails to attach the ground to the subfloor. Staple-down setup is easier than the nail-down method.
- Floating – Floating Installation has become the most do-it-yourself (DIY) friendly of all the installation methods since it’s the simplest and the quickest to perform, and it doesn’t need any particular skills or prior experience. An underlay is needed with a floating installation to prevent contact between the flooring and the subfloor and more importantly to serve as a moisture barrier and insulation.
- Solid wood flooring is a favorite kind of wood flooring made from 1 piece of wood timber such as Oak or Walnut. Also often known as real wood floors, solid floors have been around for decades and are extremely popular in the domestic and commercial properties.
** Engineered wood flooring is a type of wood flooring built by a three-layer center of timber with plywood or MDF and a top layer of wood veneer. The crux of the floor comes in Oak and Walnut, which are considered one of the most durable and most powerful of all wood species.
Everybody knows that incorporating a hardwood floor to a house can make a massive difference to the feel and the ambiance of the surroundings. However, after a few decades a hardwood flooring might start to show signs of everyday wear and tear. And whilst most of the marks, scuffs and flaws will probably do little more that to add to the floor’s character, there are a number of things you can do to give your floor a new lease of existence or slow down the aging procedure.
Refinishing Wood Floors Co. 