Refinishing Hardwood Floors

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10 reasons to pay the right price for a professional service

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When it comes to refinishing your hardwood floors you want to make the right decision of who you’re hiring. If you hire the wrong person to refinish your hardwood floors you will have more problems than just a badly sanded floor:

  1. Every time you refinish your hardwood floor you take away from the life of the floor. There’s only so much material that can be sanded. If you’re refinishing your hardwood floors more than once or twice, it is most likely you’re have to replace the floor next time.
  2. The wrong person might try to fix the floor by sanding it again and now you’re risking another bad sanding.
  3. Every time you refinish your hardwood floors you have to be away from home.
  4. As much as we all love vacations, staying at friends, family or a cheap hotel for a few days in your home town while your floors are being done, is not a dream vacation.
  5. The furniture moving costs are higher if you have to do this more than once.
  6. If you have kids or pets it might turn into a great challenge.
  7. Being away from your home and your routine interrupts your personal and your professional life.
  8. Unqualified contractors usually have bad equipment, this means dust, dust and more dust on all of your belongings from the walls to inside your closets.
  9. Refinishing your wood floors, if done improperly will turn into a minimum of several weeks ordeal.
  10. In a lot of cases the home owner or the contractor want to go to court. That means you have to gather your evidence, facts, hire a lawyer and now you’re in for a longer process and more money out of pocket.

As a hardwood flooring expert I have seen many badly sanded floors. The home owners were dealing with the problem usually for more than a month or two by the time they found me. Once hired, each and every one of them were shocked and thrilled to see my company in action:

  • We are on time.
  • We are on schedule.
  • We do it once.
  • We refinish the floors with complete dustless systems.
  • We deliver what we promise.
  • Most jobs are done in less than a week.

A lot of us like saving money and there’s nothing wrong with buy one get one free deals at the grocery store. When it comes to refinishing hardwood floors, you literally get what you pay for. I should really be saying you get what you don’t pay for.

 

Bamboo Flooring

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Bamboo floors after refinish

When it comes to bamboo flooring you really can go wrong. Quality and durability vary greatly and it all depends on the two things:

  1. The quality of the raw material

  2. The process of manufacturing

We divide bamboo flooring into the following categories:

  • solid bamboo: vertical or horizontal grain

  • engineered bamboo: plywood core or bamboo core

  • strand woven bamboo

Strand woven bamboo

Unlike trees which grow wide as well as tall, bamboo doesn’t grow wide. That’s why it has to be laminated (glued together) from narrow strips.

Solid bamboo flooring can show the vertical or horizontal side of the lamination. These floors come in different colors, in natural form or carbonized. Refinishing these floors is just like refinishing any other floors.

The engineered products are made of a bamboo veneer glued to a core plywood or a core made of bamboo. These products can usually be floated, nailed or glued down to concrete. Being able to refinish these products depends on the thickness of the veneer.

Strand woven bamboo is shredded bamboo which is then pressed to a big block with resins and glues. Then the block is sliced to make the floor planks. It is a true composite material. The strand products are very dense, heavy and hard. Note that these products need to acclimate for weeks before installation. A lot of installers face many challenges trying to install these floors. The installation of strand woven products require high level of trade education and specialty tools. I don’t know of anyone who refinished a strand woven product yet, since these floors are still fairly new to the market. Since these products have so much epoxy, resin, glue and other chemicals in them, I would certainly not attempt to refinish them.

With each type of bamboo flooring make sure it comes from a reliable source. Just because the original raw material is considered fast growing and environmentally friendly doesn’t mean that the process of making the finished product is. I have heard good and bad things from people over the years about bamboo. I can tell you this: If you buy a quality product and maintain it properly the bamboo floor should last a long time. Whether or not you’ll be able to refinish, repair, match or stain your bamboo is another issue by itself.

Strand woven bamboo solid bamboo before refinish commercial space