Hardwood Flooring Fairfax VA is any material made of wood intended for interior or exterior flooring, usually for residential or commercial use. Wood is a trendy choice as a floor covering material because it’s relatively easy to install, requiring little or no professional help. Plus, wood’s inherent properties make it great for the environment. But while wood is naturally durable and easy to maintain, it does have some shortcomings.
When choosing hardwood flooring for your home, you need to consider its moisture content. A higher moisture content means more frequent and more severe staining and warping. This means that your hardwood flooring will be less comfortable to walk on and will have a tendency to sag if it’s not sealed correctly. While high moisture content makes it a poor choice for areas where frequent and prolonged exposure to moisture is regular, you can improve the moisture level of your hardwood flooring with different techniques.
The first thing you want to check when you’re buying new hardwood flooring are its grains. Different woods have different looks and different grains. For example, hickory has large, evenly spaced, keratin-rich grains. Cherry has a coarse, grainy texture with larger, more random grains. Maple has a nice uniformity of large, tightly spaced grains that doesn’t look like oak.
One of the advantages of wooden flooring tends to be its strength. Oak hardwood flooring tends to be stronger than most other woods. Hardwood flooring tends to be more flexible, as well, meaning that it’s easier to cut and shape it to get the look you want. If you have a small room, oak hardwood flooring tends to look better than cherry or maple because it’s not as bulky.
It’s also much easier to stain hardwood flooring than it is to paint or even laminate planks. Unfinished wood floors can be sanded, sawed, or stained just about anywhere. Although many homeowners prefer the more permanent stains that come out of an automatic car cleaner, many do-it-yourselfers find it difficult to deal with dust, dirt, mold, and other residue that often come out of unfinished wood floors. Unfinished wood floors can also be placed over an existing painted floor. Although the effect of this is lost, it can make finishing a room easier.
Hardwood flooring can be scratched or damaged without leaving big permanent damage. Scratches can easily be repaired with a stone scratch remover or something similar. However, the real problem lies in deep scratches that will not be easily repairable without special tools or even refinishing. Unfortunately, most people are not comfortable with having their hardwood flooring damaged, so most opt to have these scratches repaired rather than have them removed.
One major issue with hardwood flooring that most people don’t realize is the fact that wood expands and contracts based on the temperature. In hot climates the wood board will expand while in cold climates it will contract. This means that if you install your wooden planks in a hot climate, for example, the floor could potentially “bounce” or move slightly when you walk on it. If this happens to a wooden floor in your home, especially in a bathroom or kitchen where a lot of traffic occurs, you’ll end up spending a lot of money trying to fix the problem.
Finally, no matter how well you treat your wood floors, they will inevitably lose their luster over time. This process is known as “wear”. In fact, if you have wooden floors in your home, it would be wise to invest in quality floor mats that will protect your floor from wear and tear. These floor mats can be placed in front of all of your entrances or along your staircase so that your hardwood flooring remains looking new for years to come.