Hardwood
The hardwood is the gift of nature. There is a diverse range of natural trees and above that, there are different character, colour and grains. There is shiny hardwood that brings life to the floor. You get the reflection of your personality: warm, stylish and original.
While choosing hardwood, few factors that you should keep in mind are colour, character and the type of construction. On colour, the hardwood ranges from light to intensely dark and all the intermediary colours. As a rule, lighter colour flooring works best in modern houses. The traditional houses and buildings generally have the dark floors. However, the flooring is a matter of personal choice, preference and personality.
The character is determined by the orientation of the grain naturally present in the hardwood. Strong and dramatic grains suggest a rustic feeling. The intermediate grains are used in traditional houses. The contemporary houses generally use little graining.
On construction, there is 2 basic choice that is solid or engineered. The solid hardwood has a long life as it is just made of single wood. Engineering hardwoods are sophisticated hardwoods that are made from several layers of wood. Generally, the core is that of the Polywood or HDF. These woods are specially designed to stay intact in areas with high humidity. The difference between them makes the completely exclusive. Hence, these two hardwoods should not be used in a single room.
There are multitude finishing like gloss, lustre, scraping and there are other techniques, wire brushing. They give a different flavour the hardwood. You can ask our sales staff to show you the samples.
Care & Maintenance of Hardwood
Hardwood requires the right amount of care and cleaning. But the elegancy is not at all compromised with the efforts as such efforts are very simple, and few of them are just one-time effort.
Carpet maintenance tips
What should you do with the hardwood while cleaning:
- Prohibit the use of oil based wax and other polishing materials.
- Abrasive cleaners are a strict no-no.
- Never use scouring powder or the steel wool.
- Never wash or wet the floor with soal, detergent or any household cleaning solution. This would lead to swelling of the floor. It could also lead to warping and join line separation. This is not covered in our warranty if the customers practice negligence on their part.
- Never use buffing machines
- Miscellaneous maintenance practices:
- If you have accidentally dropped candle wax or chewing gum and it has made a stop, you should harden the spot with the help of ice. The second step should be to scrape with a light brush or a scraper with diligent care. The alternative is to scrape it with a credit card. Then, wipe the floor with a damp cotton cloth.
- Shaw's R2X Surface Floor cleaners should be used for the tough stains.
- Use protective mats. One should invest in entry and exit mats that would match with your hardwood. The mats help in collecting the dust, sand and grit, asphalt, that could otherwise abrade your hardwood.
- Never use the foam based mats as it may discolour the dark floors.
- You can make use of the approved vinyl rug underlayment to prevent the slippage.
- Use floor protectors on furniture that are readily available at your good convenience store. The furniture should have a wide base and bearing to avoid the sharp abrasion on the floor.
- You should maintain humidity level to the minimum especially if you do not have engineered hardwood.
- The humidity should be maintained between 45 to 65 per cent in all seasons. This would avoid problems such as natural expansion and contraction of the wood based upon the season.
- If you have a humidifier, it is highly recommended in the winter season. Alternatively, wood stove and any other electric heat also can do the work.
- You can use an air conditioner, humidifier etc to minimise humidity in the wet and hot season.
- You should not let rainwater inside the room in any case.
- Despite wear resistance, no hardwood can protect itself from very sharp objects.
- You should never walk on the hardwood with spiked shoes, golf shoes or stilettos.
- Regularly cut the nails of the pet that could scratch the floor.
- Be careful while moving the furniture. Always lift the furniture or roll it on the wheels. Sliding the furniture damages the hardwood.
Installation of Hardwood
Installation of tiles and stones include professional measurement on the site of the customer. One can remove the old flooring with the help of professional workers. We can do it with perfection such that your floor would start looking young once again.
What should you do before installation of the hardwood?
Here are a few checklists for you so that you make sure to keep it marked before the arrival of our professionals:
- Decide who would remove the old flooring. We provide a full service to remove the old flooring.
- Decide who would move the furniture from the site to another place. Our workers can take responsibility for this but you should still remove any sophisticated, expensive and fragile material on your own.
- The general rule for the right decor is that linear tile should be parallel to the window.
- Before you allow the installation, make sure you have already measured the door clearances. Please inform it beforehand such that our team experts would calibrate their tools as per the door measurements.
- You should pain anything you want beforehand as it would avoid spoiling of the hardwood that are new.
Having learned the checklist above, we should see what you have to do before:
- The hardwood should always be installed on the subfloor for greater stability and rigidity. All of this is taken by our professionals. Whether a subfloor is needed or any kind of flattening processes is needed or not shall be decided by our professionals.
- The installer will chalk out the whole plan in his mind to calculate the kind of layout you would need for the tile. You could see him using the chalk lines as a guide.
- All of this would be taken by our professionals but for your additional information, there is even placing between hardwood pieces.
- We would check the humidity level of the floor and room to avoid future problems in form of cupping, buckling and swelling.
