Engineered vs Solid Hardwood Flooring

Solid Hardwood FlooringWooden materials are widely used for house building and decoration. They are still popular in our days. Solid hardwood flooring is still competitive with new materials, new application methods. Thus, people prefer using imitation materials to hardwood flooring. Is it about you?

So, What kind of flooring is the best? This is a difficult question. The floor covering are different in many characteristics. If aesthetic factor means nothing for you, pay attention to price, positive and negative features, materials, durability life. This is a good start to find the best floor covering. The first question to start is what kind of wooden floor to choose: engineered or solid hardwood flooring?

Engineered Hardwood Flooring

Engineered wooden floor consist of many different layers. The upper layer consists of hardwoods. The lower layers are less attractive but also very hard and reliable. All layers are connected with opposite grain direction to prevent swelling and shrinking. The wooden boards are different by their lengths and construction methods. You can construct them with nails, scabs and other constructing methods. The best-selling kinds of engineered floors are:

Wooden Sandwich

As you know, wooden sandwich is made as multilayer construction (3-5 layers are gathered together one by one). The upper layer is made of solid wood. The thick upper layers are the best solutions as they work for your best.

Stripes of Boards

The wooden stripes can be different by their broadness. The most of them are half-finished. The upper layer is made of exotic woods. It is much cheaper than previous variant because the upper layer is not thick. It is usually made of two or three layers.

Solid Hardwood Flooring

The hardwood floor is different by their broadness. The narrow boards are called poles; the broad boards are called planks. All of them are attached to the floor with nails and tenons to prevent deformation. The boards are half-finished. The range of sizes and prints are wide. The downside of the board must be applied with polish materials. It is a usual thing to use solid wooden boards of different size all together. It looks interesting.

Wooden Flooring

Do decide what to choose, engineering or solid hardwood flooring, let us learn about the rest of wooden covering. Actually, they are:

  • Parquet board
  • Mosaic
  • Block parquet

Reconstruction

You can make your floor like new with three different ways:

  • Renew and restore old wooden boards, polishing them.
  • Repair defected boards with new solid boards of high quality.
  • Cover your floor with new floor covering according to your taste – engineering or solid hardwood flooring.

Engineered or Solid Hardwood FlooringNew Flooring

If your floor is really bad, you cannot restore it. The only one right solution is making your floor new from the very beginning. The wooden boards are made of different sorts of wood of different colors and textures. You can do nothing to make your floor attractive. It is attractive on its own. Avoid buying defected boards (cracks, knots, shoulders, wrong proportions). All these defects can be dangerous for your floor quality. Your home must be safe.

Parquet Boards

The parquet board is sold in form of many boards of different sizes to be connected with one another. The floor must be covered with the help of special connections – seams and butts. It is easy to cover your floor this way.

The parquet board can be different by thickness. As a rule, it is 8-9 mm, 12-15 mm, 19 mm or 23-25 mm. The parquet board is made of hard wood like oak, elm tree or others. Sometimes you can meet pine boards. The engineered parquet boards are multilayered. The upper wooden layer is connected with the rest of other layers, made of soft wood. The parquet board can be 125-200 mm by wideness and 1,8-2,4 meters by length.

Actually, parquet board has many advantages. Speaking about the hardwood flooring, it is usually made of hard woods to be long living and different colors. As a rule, hard wood is more attractive than soft. The materials for your floor must be high quality without visible defects – flexure, cracks and knots. The parquet floor is covered with nails, or by means of special connections, making so-called floating floor.

Mosaic Flooring

Mosaic flooring consists of narrow wooden boards with the textile base. The panel consists of four separate squares. The sizes of each panel are different. They can be from 300 to 600 mm with the high of 7,5-10 mm. can use different kinds of wood for mosaic floor. It can be covered with nails of special connectors, factory-supplied.

Block Parquet

Block parquet consists of small wooden sticks that are covered one by one, separately. The most widespread decoration is herringbone. The parquet blocks are different by their thick – 6-50 mm, and 225-300 mm length, 50-75 mm wide. The blocks are covered on the backspace made of special soft materials. It needs much time and efforts. As you can see, this is the work for professional companies.

There is one more way: engineered hardwood flooring for your house. It is made of thin upper layer of hard wood and lower cork layers with vinyl protection. It is good-looking and warm. There are no problems to apply it.

The boards made of natural wood are perfect for wooden furniture and decoration in your house. As a matter of fact, there is nothing better than wooden floor in the wooden house. Nevertheless, natural aromatic wooden floor is good application for brick houses, cottages, flats. It is very important to have good weather in your home. Wooden floor makes it soft and warm. There is nothing difficult to do it on your own. To avoid mistakes and wood defects, you should call for help. It may be consultation about: What kind of floor covering to choose?

Which variant of wooden surfaces is better: engineered or solid hardwood flooring?

What is the difference between parquet boards and sandwiches?

Is wooden flooring safe for your house?

This and many other questions must be answered before making your decision: to be or not to be. Learn theory and practice it.

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