Installing hardwood floors is easier than ever these days thanks to innovations in technology such as glued down strip flooring and floating strip flooring. These two types of floors are at the cutting edge of installing hardwood floors are called engineered hardwood flooring.
Glue-down engineered hardwood is considered to be one of the highest quality floors you can buy for the money. It is also very easy to install. This type of hardwood floor consists of a top hardwood layer that is bolstered underneath by multiple layers of soft wood. The reason for the two layers is so that the wood is less likely to contract or expand with humidity and other changes to local climate. This results in a floor that is more resistant warping or swelling over the long term. This type of flooring has been popular in Europe for the last thirty years and only recently come into popularity in North America in the last four or five years.
The second type of engineered hardwood flooring is floating flooring. It is super easy to install floating click together hardwood flooring. This flooring comes in strips that consist of a very thin top layer of hardwood and a less costly wood backing. Depending on the product the hardwood layer can range in thickness between .5 mm and 2.5 mm.
By the way strip flooring that is between .5 mm and 2.5 mm is referred to as veneers because they are too thin to be sanded and painted. Hardwood floating boards that are thicker can be sanded and finished at least one time.
Installing floating hardwood flooring is a cinch as each piece comes with milled slots that fit together like puzzle pieces. All you have to do is simply click the boards together and then lay them over you subfloor. The special design of the boards creates surface tension allows them to be held together en masse as a platform that can hold quite a bit of weight and that can be walked on. This type of flooring is also very easy to clean, as the joints between the floorboards are so thin that they are practically non-existent. It is hard for dirt to get caught in floor seams that have such narrow cracks!
Before you install either type of floor there are some things that you should consider. First of all both types of floor are produced in either multi-strips or wide plank boards. The difference is that a multi strip board is created from a combination of hardwood with softwood backing and a wide plank board is just one solid piece of hardwood. Multi-strip boards have precise square edges and thus create a smoother, sleeker look with few seams. Wide products might have a more beveled edge that is more rustic looking.
When choosing floorboards to install, make sure that you choose an interlocking system that you can live with. The two strongest types of interlocking flooring are Berryloc and Uniclic. To keep your floor on the less expensive side stay away from sanding or painting and choose floors made out of thinner attractive hardwood top layers such as Mahogany, Wenge, Bamboo or Zebrano.
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