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Unfinished or prefinished hardwood floors?
Unfinished or prefinished hardwood floors?
It is not easy task to decide what kind of hardwood floors install in your house. There is a lot of different kinds of floors, there are domestic floors like oak, cheery, maple, walnut and exotic such as Brazilian cheery, bamboo, teak and much more. You can see samples of hardwood floors in the showrooms or order one online and compare the look. Make sure you take in consideration the hardness of the wood.
Here is the list, the higher the number the harder the wood:
Ipe / Brazilian Walnut / Lapacho 3684
Cumaru / Brazilian Teak 3540
Ebony 3220
2900
Red Mahogany, Turpentine 2697
Brazilian Cherry / Jatoba 2350
Santos Mahogany, Bocote, Cabreuva 2200
Cameron 1940
Rosewood 1780
Kempas 1710
Wenge, Red Pine 1630
Zebrawood 1575
Hard Maple / Sugar Maple 1450
Natural Bamboo (represents one species) 1380
White Oak 1360
Ash (White) 1320
American Beech 1300
Red Oak (Northern) 1290
Carbonized Bamboo (represents one species) 1180
Cocobolo 1136
Teak 1000
Douglas Fir 660
Larch 590
Chestnut 540
Eastern White Pine 380
After you have chosen which species you like you have to decide from unfinished or prefinished hardwood floors.
Unfinished floors are very much like prefinished the only difference is that the actual wood is sanded and finished after install at your home. If you decide for prefinished, the floor boards will be finished at the factory so after installation you don’t need to deal with sanding, dust and long wait.
If you remodel your home and don’t live in it, sanding is not a problem, you might consider unfinished wood. Unfinished hardwood floors are considered the top quality product on the flooring market. Unfinished wood can be installed with all kinds of design; boards can run in different directions, unfinished floors can have borders. You can have the medallion installed when you decide for unfinished floors. You can choose from different shines of the finish: satin, which nowadays is very popular and gives contemporary look to your house semi-gloss or high-gloss. You can choose water based finish which is environmentally friendly and creates better air quality in you home ,oiled based finishes are widely used for hardwood floors and are considered little harder then water based. After the process of installation, sanding and finishing the floor will be smooth, the seams between the boards will be tight and most importantly there is not going to be a bevel of any kind on the seams. This is an important difference between unfinished and prefinished floors. Unfinished floors will not have a bevel so there is no place for debris to collect. If the unfinished floors are incorrectly installed or wood is exposed to extremely big difference of moisture and temperature, floor boards will shrink and expand this will create a gap between boards. This is why it is important to hire experienced ,licensed hardwood floor contractor.
Prefinished floors are fast to install and your floor contractor will not sand it at your house so if you live in the house while during the project. You can get eco friendly prefinished floor such as bamboo or cork. Remember you will be limited to linear design and there will be a bevel between the boards so if you get light wood you might have dirt collecting inside the bevels of the floor boards.
Prefinished hardwood floors have finish already on the boards, make sure you are getting the floor that has hard finish, aluminum oxide it very commonly used and is in most cases harder then the regular finish that your floor contractor will apply at home. Prefinished floors are usually more affordable and the selection is very wide, there are exotic species, boards come with the variety of colors and width, can be smooth or hand scraped.
Both unfinished and prefinished floors can be refinished in the future, make sure to ask your hardwood floor installer how many times you can refinish the floor he is suggesting. Solid unfinished floors can be refinished in general 5 times. Prefinished floors come in a different thickness, some prefinished floors are very thin and there is not enough material to refinish. This is an important factor when you decide because it is always good to be able to refinish hardwood floor. You might think it is expensive to go with unfinished floor but think that you can refinish it 5 times this gives you at least 20 years, so if you save a little bit and go with prefinished floors you might end up replacing it in 5 years and if the floor you have chosen can not be refinished you will have to pay again for a new floor. Refinishing is of course more affordable then new floor.
About the Author
Rafal Maleszyk has been providing hardwood floor services in California and Hawaii , he builds wooden furniture as well.