Flooring installation
Timberland Floors specializes in wood floor installation and sanding. From the process of subfloor preparation, acclimation, and through the final product… We can provide the level of service your flooring project needs.
Adding value to your home
Wood flooring can have a long service life and diverse appearances if installed properly. Some television ads promise “next day flooring”, which is implausible with some wood floors.
Prior to installing any flooring, the area of installation must be prepared. Most manufacturers have specifications for subfloor thickness, flatness, and moisture content. Following these specifications is essential for maintaining product performance warranties.
Jobsite Plan to Final Product
A successful flooring project begins with the right questions and planning. The best flooring choices will compliment your home and living situation rather than give you perfection anxiety.
- Do you have pets? If so, it may be worth having a lower sheen floor. Shiny floors highlight scratches. Any wood floor will scratch in the right circumstances. Learn to live with the floor that obsess over an occasional scratch.
- Do your windows face intense sunlight? Some areas of a floor may experience a 20-30 degree difference in direct sunlight. This can result in moisture imbalances and/or changes in color from UV damage. Tinting of windows may be helpful, particularly against the Michigan sun.
- What color ideas do you have? We speak the language of wood species, products, and colors too. Feel free to share your ideas from Pinterest or Houzz.
Flat, Clean, and Secure
Sub-flooring is the foundation for your flooring project. It is essential that prior to installing new flooring, the sub-floor be addressed. Undulations that are not removed can telegraph through to the flooring above. Securing any squeaks between the subfloor and joists is another key element or preparation.
Environmental Conditions
Interior humidity impacts the performance of some building products, but especially wood flooring. A prolonged moisture imbalance in wood flooring can result in cupping or gapping of floors. Changes in temperature affect the ability of air to retain moisture. To learn more about the technical details and science, check out our blog post.
Happy Hardwood Floors
Following project completion, we will ensure you know exactly how to care for your wood flooring. Cleaning products that add shine typically add residual solids that become optically dull over time. We ensure you know what product to use and when you use it for cleaning your floors.
Removing Remnants
Old paint and drywall can create high spots in your flooring. We remove this construction remnant prior to installing any floors.
Demolition
Old tile in the way? Removing old tile is a tough chore. After the tile has been removed, the subfloor should be sanded lightly to remove old adhesive. Then we can install your new wood floors.
Flat and Clean
After the sanding process, the subfloor is thoroughly vacuumed to remove any particulates. If necessary or desired, the subfloor can be sealed to mitigate moisture intrusion from below.
Timberland Floors specializes in the flooring installation for solid and engineered wood floors. The skill and know-how of our installers ensures a quality installation with the attention to detail you expect. Do not fall for the so called “flooring experts” who do a poor site preparation and lack experience. A wood floor installation in your home is quite an investment and really should command more thought than just falling in love with the color of a sample from a display shelf.
The flooring material used in your project is honestly only one part of a bigger equation that factors in moisture, sub-floor preparation, and installation methods. Keep reading and I will detail each component that contributes to an artisanal and successful project.
Defining Quality
• Milling – To make flooring you need to mill it to shape and sometimes construct it using adhesives if it is an engineered floor. The quality with which your floor is milled determines how well it will stay tight and gap-free through time as well as a longer service life. If your wood floor installation does not require an overly aggressive sanding to flatten because of proper milling, then you will have a thicker remaining sanding layer once it is completed. You will be surprised at how spending and extra few hundred dollars up front will give you more value years down the road.
Three common wood floor products:
• Solid Wood Flooring
A solid piece of wood from top to bottom of the plank. We generally prefer solid wood flooring for two reasons: service life and predictability of behavior. Solid wood floors tend to have approximately 6-8 sanding cycles available because of the wear layer thickness. This means that your solid wood flooring installation will likely be around for 100 years or more if it is well maintained. Solid wood flooring can have a more predictable behavior because it is simply one piece of wood within a board as opposed to engineered flooring that has differing expansion and contraction rates because of the multiple materials within one board.
• Engineered Flooring
This material is simply a real wood layer that has been laminated to a plywood core or other materials for extra dimensional stability and to reduce the amount of real wood necessary to make a floor. You can purchase engineered flooring with finish applied at the factory or not.
• Factory Finished Flooring
This material can be EITHER engineered or solid material that was finished at the factory prior to installation on site. Factory finished flooring simply has a time advantage that it can be installed and does not require on-site sanding, but requires extra site preparation for sub-floor flatness and takes a little longer to install. The finishes applied at the factory can be good or not, it really depends on the quality of the product.
As a final note regarding factory-finished flooring, please be careful selecting a product based on warranties, because many warranties exclude scratches, wear and tear and finish issues. In most cases they only cover a structural failure of the floor itself. Understand that quality engineered flooring or factory finished flooring generally is not cheaper than a site-finished wood floor once labor and material costs are combined.
Flooring installation
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