Category: woodfloor

Laminate Flooring Reviews and Tips

What exactly is laminate flooring and what makes it the best choice for you?  

Laminate flooring has evolved into a very competitive alternative to hardwood or stone floors. It is a composite of several different layers fused together. The best laminate flooring will have a thick, hard wearing protective top layer, 3 to 4 further inner core layers for structural stability and a quality click-lock system for easy installation.  

Let’s look into more advantages of laminate floors. 

Barely distinguishable from the real thing! – Top laminate floors replicate the look and feel of wood or stone. 

Infinite variety of design – Photographic and printing techniques make it possible to recreate just about every kind of flooring surface imaginable.  

Cost – The cost of producing it and thus the retail price is significantly cheaper than authentic hardwoods or stone products.  

Eco-Friendly – Laminates are mostly made in the home country of sale, it provide a lower carbon-footprint than the farming, harvesting and transportation of hardwoods or stone flooring. Plus many manufacturers use recycled wood products for the MDF layer.  

Easy installation and removal – Laminate floors come with “click-lock” a system that simplifies the installation of laminate boards (as a floating floor) over a subfloor, and thanks to it laminate flooring it is one of the easiest floors to remove when it needs to. 

Durable and resistant – Laminates are perfect for high traffic areas and can even be installed in moist areas like bathrooms (the waterproof kind).  

Easy clean and maintenance – Laminate flooring is easy to clean: simple vacuum or sweep and then run a barely damp mop over it, no annual maintenance projects required! 

Cons of Laminate Flooring 

It’s not real! – That’s the number one reason that puts some people off laminate. Lower perceived value – Because it is lower in cost and not authentic, laminate is not seen as a premium product.  

Cannot be refinished – If it gets badly damaged you cannot simply sand it back. It must be replaced.  

Hard, noisy and slippery! – Laminate floors have a harder feel than real hardwood. It makes them inefficient at absorbing sound. Also, beware because this floor can be a bit slippery! 

So What Makes a Great Laminate Floor? 

A laminate with a varied pattern makes easy to create a more varied and natural look to your floor as you lay it. The best laminate flooring manufacturers have kept up with all the latest design trends to ensure their products stay relevant to today’s market. 

The biggest trends are: 

Bigger planks Trying to replicate trends in real hardwood flooring there are now longer and wider planks too. 

High gloss finishes – laminate flooring paired with refined minimalist interiors can offer a very chic high-end look, even on a budget. 

Laminate your walls! – Yes, you read that right! If done right, adding the same wood look laminate flooring from your floor onto a key accent wall can look spectacular. 

Consider where it’s going – High traffic areas may need laminates with superior wear layers, and basement or bathrooms may need specific underlayment to deal with potential moisture. 

Don’t forget the underlayment! – Specially if you are planning to use laminate in the bathroom or with under floor heating. 

DIY- friendly? – Laminate flooring is one of the more DIY-friendly flooring options, There are tons of how-to guides and videos online. 

Why not find out how much you could save yourself by getting a free quote for laminate floor installation from local contractors? 

Other laminate flooring options – There are other green alternatives to consider like bamboo, eucalyptus and cork floors. These floors are created using similar fusing technologies as those used to create laminates. 

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Laminate Flooring = Lasting Durability

Laminate flooring could be the perfect choice for your active lifestyle.  

Durability, good looks and value are smartly balanced so you upgrade and decorate without breaking your budget or loose quality. 

Choose Laminates to Achieve Your Decorating Goals 

Laminates are available in a broad variety of handsomely crafted designs. They provide the rugged durability at a value price. Thus you can find a long-wearing laminate style that can help accomplish your decorating ideas within your budget. 

Laminate Flooring = Lasting Durability 

The beautiful design you love today will remain the same in the years to come. 

All laminates are constructed of four layers: 

  • The wear layer is a clear layer of aluminum oxide that protects against fading, stains and surface burns. 
  • The design layer contains a photograph of the floor’s surface appearance. 
  • The core layer is a durable high-density board to protect the floor. 
  • The back layer is a stability layer that helps balance the floor. 

Thanks to layered construction, Laminate Floors will always look as good as the day it was installed. 

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How Laminated Floors are Made

Laminated floors have been around for a long time, but new improvements have added a much-needed feature: waterproofing.

This material is an ideal choice indoor use.

The material’s actual name is Direct pressure laminated.

It is manufactured by fusing four layers together at over 600 pounds of pressure per inch at temperatures of around 400 degrees Fahrenheit. These four layers function as follows:

• The bottom layer is known as the stabilizing or the backing layer, this layer provides strength and stability to the board. To make this material waterproof they have applied a resin-based coat to prevent water from penetrating into the material.

• The 2nd layer is known as the core board and its serves as the structural element supporting the weight and stresses of foot traffic. This layer is typically made of high-density fiberboard (HDF), but sometimes is made from particle board or medium-density fiberboard (MDF).

• The 3rd layer is decorative. It sits on top of the entire structure and its objective is to mimic the surface of a natural material, such as a hardwood veneer or lately any type of tile or other flooring materials that the manufacturer wants to resemble.

• The 4th layer is a resin-based coating designed to resist abrasion and typically made up of several coats of melamine or aluminum oxide (2nd only to diamonds in hardness) which protects the floor from stains, fading, wear and tear. This is the magical layer that makes laminated material resistant to scratches and stains.

Hopefully this information can help you by explaining how waterproof laminated floors are made and why they can be your low price, ideal solution, for your next flooring project.

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Having THIS flooring inside your home can add THOUSANDS to your property’s value

ADDING value to your home can help when it comes to selling it, and having a certain type of flooring inside your property can do just that.

Installing new flooring across your home can increase your house’s worth, depending on what material you use. 

Out of vinyl, carpet and wood flooring, which can add the most value to your property?

Discount Flooring Depot suggests the types of floor you should avoid, and which one you should invest in to up your property’s price. 

The retailer suggests that low quality vinyls and laminates will drag your value down, and it seems most homes are leaning towards wooden floors rather than carpeted floors. The best floor to invest in is a wooden floor – which is better than carpet – as it provides “extra equity” in your home. 

Plus, a high quality floor will last for much longer than a carpet, giving you life time value, as well as increasing house worth. 

Hardwood flooring is ideal, as it’s a luxury that many people associate with money and class. 

But if real wood flooring is out of your price range, you can get high quality laminates. 

Top of the range laminate floors have realist V-Grooves to mimic the feel and appearance of a real board, and they have a wealth of grain variation and knots throughout, just as you’d expect from real wood. 

When it comes to bathrooms or kitchens, hard wood flooring generally doesn’t go – but you don’t have to settle for vinyl. 

You can get water resistant laminate, and it’s not that expensive. 

Discount Flooring Depot’s Hydro Guard Range or laminate floors look like real wood, but without the problems that mixing real wood in a wet environment will often bring.The retailer says spending around £400 to £600 could increase your home’s value by £1,300. 

The colour of your front door can also have a big impact on your home’s sale. So what shades should you go for, and which should you avoid? 

Research carried out by Westbury Windows and Joinery’s found that white was the most popular colour for wood front doors or entrance doors in the UK. 

Natural stained and/or varnished finishes were the second most popular choice with black in third place. 

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How to Refinish Hardwood Floors

​Renew a wood floor in half the time and at half the expense of sanding. The secret is to screen the old finish. Read on to see if screening will work for your floor.

Sanding vs. screening

When a wood floor loses its luster, the usual solution is to sand it down to raw wood and completely refinish it. But often, that’s the wrong solution. Refinishing hardwood floors is the right solution.

All wood floors are protected by a clear coating that eventually becomes scratched, scuffed and dull. Refinishing hardwood floors can help you get rid of those unsightly scratches and marks. But as long as the damage is shallow—in the coating and not in the wood itself—you can renew the floor by adding a new coat of polyurethane right over the old finish.

This article will show you how to do just that. As with any wood-finishing project, 90 percent of this job is preparation. You have to thoroughly clean the floor, touch up any deep scratches and roughen the existing finish with sanding screens so the new finish will adhere well. Expect to spend at least one full day on this prep work. The recoating itself usually takes less than an hour.

Recoating takes a lot less time, skill and money than full-scale sanding and refinishing. And although roughing up the existing finish creates plenty of dust, it’s still much less messy than sanding down to bare wood. There’s another advantage: Every time you sand a floor down to bare wood, you remove some of the wood. A solid wood floor can be sanded several times before that’s a problem. But laminated floors (glue-down or floating floors) have only a thin layer of good-looking wood veneer over a plywood-like base. The veneer can be sanded once or twice—after that, sanding will expose the plywood core beneath.

Where recoating won’t work

The type of flooring you have doesn’t matter. Recoating works on solid wood, laminated wood and parquet floors alike. But a new coat of polyurethane may not stick to your existing finish.

If your floor’s finish was applied before the 1970s, it’s probably wax, old-fashioned varnish or shellac. No new finish will stick to a wax finish or any other finish that’s ever had wax applied to it. Polyurethane might adhere to an old, unwaxed varnish or shellac finish. But these finishes do wear out, and since they’re probably more than 30 years old, it’s best to sand them off and start over.

In fact, if you have an old finish from the days before polyurethane, your only alternative to sanding is wax. If the floor is in fair condition, wax can restore the shine. A wood flooring dealer can recommend a suitable product. Wax is easy to use, but not very durable. You’ll probably have to rewax every six months or so.

Even if the existing finish is polyurethane, good adhesion isn’t a sure thing. Residue from all kinds of household chemicals, such as furniture polish, glass cleaner, insecticide and wallpaper paste, can interfere with adhesion. Since you can’t know for certain all the potions that have landed on your floor, you must test for adhesion before you recoat your floor.

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