The Floor Geek

If you’ve been considering purchasing a new floor in your house, you may want to consider the look of exotic woods. Offering far away beauty and a look that makes you feel right at home, exotic wood is more luxurious than standard wood or carpet. When considering your options, be sure to remember that laminate flooring is a good choice for your home, as an alternative to real exotic wood.

Bruce Park Avenue and Armstrong Grand Illusions, for example, make absolutely beautiful floors. The high-gloss, piano finish that protects the various species of exotic styled laminate is breathtaking, as is the price. At less than half what you might pay for real exotic wood floors, you can walk away with the same look and feel (with an easier installation) for as little as under $5 per foot, installed. Not only does this product give the appearance of real exotic woods without impacting the forest, but it is also eight times more reesistant to scratches and other wear than engineered wood.

If I had to pick a hardwood floor for above grade installation I know what I’d pick. Bruce’s Dundee Plank by Armstrong, in cabin grade. This wood is 3/4″ x 3 1/4″ solid oak plank with a 5 year warranty. The micro beveled sides make for easy installation and a beautiful floor. Bruce also fills the knot holes and voids on their cabin and tavern grade wood, which makes for a nice look.

The cabin grade wood gives enough variation in color and enough knots and mineral streaks to give a beautiful, very natural appearance.

Cook floors may be the hottest flooring product for 2009. First, cork flooring is very attractive. It is available in many colors, and offers a unique but very classy appearance.

Next, cork has excellent acoustical benefits for a room. The quality of sound is superior in a room with cork floorig, especially compared to wood or laminate floors.

Most cork floors have easy installation. Several manufacturers (like US floors) use the unilin click system, which makes installation a breeze.

Last but not least is the fact that cork is very very green. Harvesting cork does not harm the cork tree, so it is one of our great, renewable nature resources.

All in all, cork flooring can be a tremendous value, and a viable choice for many rooms in your home.

Stainmaster filament nylon is still the best carpet fiber in the industry. First of all, it is very stain resistant. Stainmaster immerses their dyed carpet in a soil and stain resistant coating that is made to work with the fiber. Other fibers are treated with stain resistant treatments, but this treatment must be repeated after every cleaning. However, with Stainmaster, the treatment will last for years with no need for reapplication.

Also, the nylon has better memory. This means that the carpet will hold up well against high traffic. Lastly, the filament will not fuzz because it is one continuous strand of fiber, which keeps it from shedding loose fibers.

When starting your search for carpet, picking a manufacturer is often a hard decision to make. With all the brands out there, it’s hard to differentiate between them sometimes. Well, if you are in the market for luxurious, beautiful carpet, you should definitely consider Stanton Carpet.

Having been in the premium, high-end carpet business since 1980, Stanton Carpet knows what they’re doing. They’ve taken luxury carpet to a new level, and are synonymous with style and value in the decorative market. They have developed a high-quality reputation, and have stuck to it since the beginning.

Stanton Carpet offers more styles and collections than most premium carpet manufacturers, and uses a vast array of innovative designs to set new standards.

If you’ve just recently purchased a new floor, or are in the market for one, and need to have someone install it for you, you may be wondering where to look.

Flooring Installation

One way to find a decent installer is to check www.cfi-installers.org. This is the official website for Certified Floorcovering Installers, a national certification program for installation professionals. You simply enter your zip code, and a radius in which you want to search. A list of installers and their certifications will come up.

Alternately, you can always check with your salesperson. Usually, floorcovering stores have a list of installers they recommend. This is also a wise choice when you’ve bought your flooring locally. This really works to your advantage if the store is willing to back this installer with an installation warranty of some sort.

A third option would be to check with friends or relatives. See who they had install their floor. This is a good way to know what to expect of your installer, as you can see first-hand what kind of work they are capable of doing.

Probably your last resort, you can always check in your local yellow pages or phone directory. Most areas will have a section specifically for “Flooring Installers.”

In any case, be sure you check references. Make sure the person you have coming out to your house has a good reputation for quality workmanship. The last thing you want is someone you’ve never heard of, someone you know nothing about, coming out to your house and doing a poor job installing your new floor.

As the year winds down, it’s time for retailers to get aggressive with their cash. A lot of hardwood flooring deals are showing up from the nation’s top suppliers. It’s time for them to clean out their inventory and it’s time for us to buy. Armstrong/Bruce hardwood flooring, Mohawk’s Columbia, Mannington and others now have tremendously low prices on several running lines, as well as promotional flooring. These are inventory purchases, where cash is king.

What does this mean for consumers? Shop hard, and find the best deals. Cabin Grade prices for prefinished, 3/4″ solid oak should run $1.95 to $2.75 per square foot, while engineered hard wood should run $1.50 to $1.95 per square foot. The best deals will be showing up in mid-December and running thru February.

Additionally, remember that color plays a factor in the cost of hardwood. Your “A” colors are gunstock, butterscotch, and natural (Red Oak natural, in particular). Other colors may be sold at a discount. Also remember importers love the name gunstock, and use that color name very loosely. Armstrong’s Bruce Hardwood Flooring, our country’s leading producer of prefinished hardwood flooring, is a great guide to what standard colors should look like.

Your best advice is to shop hard, but only from reputable dealers, and remember you can never go wrong with Bruce Hardwood Flooring.