The Best Wood Floors for Dog and Cat Owners – Part 1

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20161020_114247_smMany of us have dogs or cats as part of our family, and as such we let them inside the house on the hardwood floors. Dogs and cats will walk, run and play on the wood floors and much like us humans will cause some damages over the years. Normal use of our wood floors will eventually cause loss of sheen, scratches, dents, stains and discoloration. Having pets in the house often causes early wear and tear and/or excessive scratches. This leads me to guide you through choosing and using your new wood floors.

The first thing you need to remember is that what you are wearing through is the finish on top of the wood floors, not the wood itself. When considering a new hardwood floors, remember that you don’t need the hardest wood in the world. Unless you drop hammers on the floor every day you don’t really need a floor like let’s say Ipe’ or Strand Woven Bamboo.

The second thing to remember is what the plan for the near future is; Are you going to sell the home? Are you staying there for a while and might need to be able to refinish the floors?

The third and last thing to ask yourself is what kind of pet do you have? Is it a small dog or a big heavy dog that will scratch the floor finish easily? Is it a puppy which urinates everywhere and will stain the wood?

Let’s discuss these issues and figure out which wood is best for you:

  • If choosing a prefinished product buy a higher quality floor, usually the more you pay the better the finish. If you choose a site finished product make sure your contractor uses commercial finishes and not DIY cheap one component finishes. I recommend using a site finished product because of many reasons, the main one being – you can add one or two extra coats for more protection. That was easy, right?
  • If you are selling the home in less than ten years then you’ll need to make sure your hardwood floor can be refinished or recoated before you sell it. Nobody wants to buy a home with a beat up wood floor that needs work or cannot be serviced. If you bought a prefinished floor that cannot be sanded because of a thin veneer or because of a Teflon like coating then you have a problem. If you chose a solid site finished product then you can easily repair and sand it, and most likely change the color/sheen.
  • Important: no finish is impermeable – meaning if your dog urinates on the floor or a water spill stays on the floor it will eventually penetrate through the finish and stain the wood. The stain cannot be sanded off. The solution to this is preventing by training your pets, there is really nothing you can do with wood floors to protect them from liquid damage.

To summarize, choose a floor that is versatile in service and use. Don’t choose something too soft like Fir and you don’t have to use an exotic wood like Ipe’. There are many options for you out there like White Oak, Red Oak, Maple, Brazilian Cherry, European Oak and more. Do your research and make sure that in the end, you hire and consult a professional. In the next part I will discuss how to use and maintain your hardwood floors with pets in the home.

The Benefits of Refinishing Your Oak Parquet Floors

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20161004_130742We recently refinished two oak parquet floors in the East Bay area. In both cases, the transformation was overwhelming to the home owners. Their floors were in such bad shape that they considered a floor replacement as an alternative to the refinish. A floor replacement would have cost four to five times more than a simple refinish. These days it seems as though the traditional oak look is not IN, and the weathered barn looking oak is trendier than clear urethane finishes. Rushing to tear out a solid oak floor, no matter how old it is can be costly, time consuming and doesn’t necessarily yield a much better result than preserving the floor.

With just a few steps we took a worn, old looking oak floor and made it into the focal point of the house. Here is what we did:

  • With a full dustless refinishing we stripped the old finish to expose the bare wood
  • Carefully sanded the floor flat and repaired any damaged areas
  • Used the dust from the sanding we then filled the floor to minimize any gaps
  • Wiped on a neutral stain color to bring out the beauty of the oak grain
  • Applied commercial two part water base finishes to protect the wood for years to come

20161004_131553These are two cases of how to get the most bang for your buck with hiring the right contractor (Avi’s Hardwood Floors) who can assess the floor and make the appropriate recommendation.

There is nothing wrong with a not so perfect floor. Think of how you looked like when you were a teen and how you look like today. Now think about how old your floor is. Your floor is probably decades old, had seen foot traffic from hundreds of people, furniture and food spills. If it can still take another refinish, let it be. No reason to replace it just yet.

Matching your original oak floors with new

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A lot of home remodel projects call for new hardwood floors in additions, repair of areas where walls were removed and refinishing of the existing floors. It takes a skilled craftsman to identify the type of hardwood floors you have in order to get a match to your 100 year old floor. We got a call just for that type of project in the Berkeley area. The kitchen had old and worn vinyl floor and the home owner wanted to replace that with new hardwood floors to match what was in the rest of the house. A quick look around and I determined the floors were solid top nail white oak. Original to the home, those floors had seen quite the use and a lot of sun light over the years. I recommended using the same white oak floors in the kitchen with the only difference of a tongue and groove product instead of a top nail. The owners agreed to my recommendation and accepted the quote. We then scheduled the delivery date for the wood to acclimate properly to the home. Approximately a week after that we removed the old floor in the kitchen and installed the new white oak floors. We took the time to sand and seal the appliances areas so that they could be installed back in place immediately. That way the home owners didn’t need to worry about the appliances being installed after the floors were all finished and accidently scratching them. After we completed the install we checked the moisture content in the new wood, comparing it to the moisture content in the existing hardwood floors. That gave us a good idea of how long we had to wait before sanding and finishing the new white oak floors. We came back about a week later to sand the new white oak floor in the kitchen and the existing floors in the dining room. The owners stayed somewhere else while the finishing was taking place for a week. This was phase one of two to refinish the floors in the entire first floor. With having no place to put the furniture, a full schedule and young kids in the house we all decided to plan out and schedule the second phase later in the year. The finish on the older floors was a one component low solids water base. The finish faded over the years and was completely worn by the time we got there to do the work. When we were done the big difference in finish qualities and look was obvious to the untrained eye ever before. Four coats of high solid polyurethane showed a smooth, clear and rich looking finish, providing this family with a floor to be used for years to come.

How often should I refinish my hardwood floors?

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20160701_080008_SmWhether you live in the Berkeley Hills or Alamo, if you have wood floors they are most likely original to the house. Whether you live in San Pablo or El Cerrito, you most likely have a white or red oak solid floor. These floors are solid wood and had been around for decades, some even more than a century. The life span of a traditional oak floor is longer than what most people think. We just refinished a white oak floor that was installed in 1965. It has been around for about 50 years and has more life on it for another 50. When we refinish oak floors we get this question a lot: “how long before I need to refinish my floors again?”

The short answer is: it depends. Some floors will need to be refinished after several years and some after more than a decade. Here are the factors that contribute to the durability and longevity of the wood floors finish:

  • Professionally sanding the floors – a qualified contractor will only sand very little off the floor. Poor sanding can take years off the life of the floors. Also, the smoother and more flat the sanding, the more consistent the finish layer will be
  • Using commercial finishes – if your contractor uses cheap or DIY finishes from the local box store, you are guaranteed a finish that will wear and tear quickly
  • Following manufacturer recommendation for the proper drying and curing conditions. Home owners are told it is okay to move in two days after the final coat was applied. It is not. The finish needs proper time to harden and cure and that takes more time than two days
  • Maintenance – proper care for your wood floors will guarantee more years of use before a need to refinish

From our experience at Avi’s Hardwood Floors the average family would need to refinish their floors every 10-15 years. With proper sanding and finishing on our end, and proper use and maintenance on your end (the consumer) your wood floor finish will last a long time.

Why Hire Avi’s Hardwood Floors?

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At Avi’s Hardwood Floors we offer anything and everything that is wood floors. We install, sand and finish solid hardwood floors in the East Bay communities. Our reputation had been built on quality and customer service.

Which is the Best finish for my Wood Floors?

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Sanded-Hardwood-FloorsWe all want to protect our wood floors with the best finish available so we don’t have to do it all over again, right? Most our clients who choose to install new hardwood floors in the East Bay are concerned about the future of their floors. One client in Berkeley, CA asked me what finish would be best living with a big dog in the house. Another one in El Cerrito wanted to know what finish would protect their wood floors from water damage. The answer to this question is very simple: choose a professional to apply a commercial finish on your floor, maintain it properly and you should be fine. There is no one magic floor finish that does it all, after all we all walk on these finishes every day.

There are many choices of finish out there, here is a table exploring some of the characteristics of the main finishes used in the wood flooring market these days:

Finish Type

Color

Approximate Drying Time

Approximate Cure Time

Aging Color

Approximate VOC

Pros

Cons

Oil Base Urethane

Amber

overnight

7 days

Amber

500 g/L

Durable, ages nicely, easy to repair

Strong smell, dries slowly

Water Base Urethane

Clear

3-4 hours

Approximately 80% in 3 days

yellow

210 g/L

Durable, lower VOC, dries and cures fast

Results vary depend on product

Wax Oil Blend

All colors

overnight

7 days

Depends on color

zero

Easy to maintain, no VOC

No resin build up on the floor like oil and water finishes

Staining Wood Before Finishing

All colors

3-4 hours for light colors overnight for dark colors

7 days

N/A

550 g/L

n/

n/a

All finishes require regular maintenance.

All finishes will scratch.

All finishes will wear with regular use overtime.

All finishes can be repaired or restored with different results.

There is no magic product that cures in a day and will never need refinishing. It all comes down to which look you like and how you would be using the floors. Applied correctly all finishes will stand the test of time.

Fixing Badly Sanded Hardwood Floors

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Sanded-Hardwood-FloorsWe were called again to fix a floor that was badly sanded. After a water leak damaged the wood floor in a home in Lafayette, the insurance company brought in their hardwood flooring guys to fix the floor. The home owners assumed everything was going to be handled by the insurance company. Little did they know that the guys hired to refinish the wood floors were just plain horrible. The home owners returned to their house to discover a disaster: dust everywhere, gauges in their baseboards and an uneven floor.

Shortly after their discovery the home owners found Avi’s Hardwood Floors and contacted me for an estimate. When I got there it was obvious the floors needed a full refinish and the baseboards needed replacement. After closely inspecting the stairs we also decided to replace all the decorative molding on the stairs.

After a long while of the owners dealing with their insurance company we finally got the green light. The owners knew we were up to the challenge but like anyone who’s been through a bad experience, it was obvious they were concerned with the outcome. After all this was the second and last shot at the sanding, otherwise the floor would have to be replaced because there would not be much wood left to sand. We showed up on time and started stripping the finish off the floor while making the floors flat. This took a little while and the more we sanded the more we realized how bad the sanding job was. In some places we could not take the gauges out without replacing the boards. By looking at the scratch pattern on the floors we determined that one of the tools used on the floor by the other guys was – A grinder.

That explained the small circular scratches in the wood, the long deep gauges and the damaged baseboards. The owners were scheduled to stay at the house the first part of the sanding, then leave for the staining and finishing phase. Once we finished the final sanding I could see a big relief in the owner’s eyes. They were watching us sanding the floors at times and expressed their appreciation in our effort to keep everything clean and the floor flat. We made a custom stain color for them at their request to minimize the gold and yellow in their red oak floor. We applied the stain coat on a Friday so that we could let it dry for three days. The pigments in dark stains like the ones we used are very heavy and require longer drying times. The following week while the owners were gone we applied three coats of commercial water base finish and installed all new baseboards and stair moldings throughout the working areas. I took the time to text pictures of our progress to the owners every day.

As usual we did the best we could and the floor came out as expected. Avi’s Hardwood Floors takes pride in doing the best on every job. It makes for happy clients and life easier on everyone knowing that a project only needed to be done once. 

Refinishing Brazilian Cherry Floors

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This time we were called to fix a wood floor someone else refinished badly. The owners got my name from researching online and finding my information on the National Wood Flooring Association website. It has been more than a month since the floor was refinished. The contractor had dust all over the home, the finished floor was streaky, had sanding marks everywhere and did not look good. The contractor told the owner to move the rugs and furniture back onto the floor only a couple of days after he was done. Obviously, it did sound strange to the owners but they figured they should listen to the professional. Long story short, the finish under the rugs was completely ruined from being covered so quickly without having time to cure. The sheen of the floor was uneven and the contractor who came back to fix the final coat just made it worse.

When I met with both the husband and wife I reassured them very quickly that I could fix this to their satisfaction. I explained to them who Avi’s Hardwood Floors was. We discussed my experience, education, training, tools and the high level of craftsmanship both my employees and myself constantly try to improve. To their request I pointed out everything I saw in the floor that I could fix. They were impressed by the number of details my trained eye could see. I also recommended a different finish on this exotic wood – Brazilian Cherry, a conversion varnish. They admitted that they could not see a lot of the things I noticed as I was walking them through the floor.

I sent them the quote the same day. They approved it immediately and we started the work. I assume between meeting me and reading information online about my company they knew we are the best.

With the project approved we scheduled the job. On the agreed upon date we showed up on time, sanded the floor to perfection and finished on schedule. We finished the work in about a week and this is how we did it:

  • We covered all appliances and cabinet surfaces in the kitchen with cardboards
  • We taped off our work areas
  • We vacuumed the floor before we sanded it
  • We sanded all existing imperfections in the wood floor utilizing both technique and the right tools
  • We then applied a conversion varnish over the floor and let it cure properly

There are a lot of guys out there who kind of know what they are doing when it comes to hardwood floor refinishing. I don’t blame them for not knowing what they don’t know. This is exactly the scenario we see at Avi’s Hardwood Floors every week. Make sure your contractor is qualified and capable of providing a quality service. Just because someone has a license and some tools doesn’t make them a professional. In this case the time wasted was two months from the time the first contractor did the floors and the time we completed the refinish/repair work. 

The expensive cost of refinishing wood floors for less

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Floor refinishHome services can be cheap or expansive. Some services that come to mind are plumbing, heating, painting, kitchen remodeling and of course wood floors. We all know the saying you get what you pay for. In most cases it is true and I have seen too many floors that failed because of a price point decision made by the consumer. The most common mistake consumers make is hiring flooring contractors based on price or letting the price be the first deciding factor on their list.  

As we all are consumers at one point or another we should look out for a few things when hiring a hardwood specialist:

  1. Reputation
  2. Experience
  3. Technical education
  4. Equipment
  5. Intuition 

As you can see money is not on this list. The bottom line is that if you look out for these five factors you’ll end up with very compatible quotes as far as price goes. In other words, most chances are that if you interview three flooring contractors that have the same level of 1-4 elements, they would all be within the same price range. So, going back to “you get what you pay for”. Done right, the interview process is very critical to making a wise and educated decision. I speak for myself when I say that when I interview contractors to work in my home it all comes down to intuition. I can very easily find two or three contractors that hold the same experience, education and reputation. In the end I will hire the one I feel most comfortable with. 

So how in the world a small decision like hiring the wrong flooring contractor can flip your life upside down, cost you a lot more money than you planned and ruin your schedule? Let’s start with the decision making of one John Doe. John hired contractor X to refinish his floors. X was not the most educated or experienced but the price was right, which made his quote very attractive. He did offer three coats of oil base urethane like the other guys, though he could also move furniture and work on the weekend. 

Here is what happened next: contractor x was late every day, used no dust control, his guys were not insured, he used cheap finish from the local box store and in the end the floors looked horrible. The owner paid 50% cash up front for a job that didn’t deserve even that amount. 

The owners came back after a weekend out of town to discover the following:

  • Their entire house including the walls was covered with dust.
  • The floors looked dirty, blotchy and felt rough to the touch.
  • There was garbage everywhere they looked; outside, on the window cells and in their bathrooms.
  • The sinks were filthy.
  • The walls and their cabinets were all scratched up.
  • The baseboards were gauged and had black marks all over them.

John Doe much like any of us was unhappy to say the least. He called the contractor asking for the floors to get fixed up and pointed out all the damages in the house. The contractor said the floors were fine and wanted his money. Since John refused to pay the contractor decided to sue John. Two months later:

  • They were in court
  • The floors were not fixed
  • John had to hire a pro to fix the floors for more money, a lot more
  • The family and the pets had to have arrangements made for them for all this time
  • John spent endless hours talking to experts, researching his problem online and dealing with the issue.

In the end, all this could have been avoided had John decided to pay a little more to a more qualified professional. I see this stuff happen every month. We get called out to fix jobs like that. By the time I show up to look at the floors, it is usually a couple of months after the problems started. In not so many words: we quote the job, schedule it, show up on time, complete it to customer’s satisfaction on schedule and move on. This is how it should be for everyone. Remember that saving money on your wood floors can cost a lot more very shortly after. 

As the old saying: cheap labor is expansive. 

Wood Medallions and Custom Hardwood Floors

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IMG_4874The effect wood medallions have on the final design of a home is huge. Many home owners are not aware of the upgrade options they have with their hardwood floors. In most cases the home already has wood floors, so adding on an inlay or a medallion insert goes a long way. When we discuss our refinishing process with potential clients we take the time to explain and show the different floor upgrades we offer. Something simple as a medallion insert at the entry can transform the entire wood floor. The idea is to add an element to compliment the floor instead of distracting the eye to that element alone.

Wood medallions come in many shapes and colors. From a simple rose compass circular medallion with geometric design to a free form ellipse with curved inlays and marquetry. Much like going to any store, exploring the wood options by yourself can be overwhelming. At Avi’s Hardwood Floors we take the time to inspect and analyze the layout and design of your home before we come up with a few complimenting upgrade options.

In some cases where the wood floors already have a border around the perimeter we offer a darker inlayed feature strip to highlight the design. We can add on decorative wood corner blocks or inlay a pattern into the field of the floor. In other cases we recommend leaving the floor as is and add only one element, like a medallion. Wood medallions are installed at focal points in the home like in front of you fire place or at the entry. In places where you can see them, they will not be covered in furniture and not in high traffic areas.

Our clients usually say this after we do the work: “why in the world didn’t I upgrade my floors before?” it is amazing to see what a single piece of wood marquetry does to the feel of a floor. It becomes a story, a part of your family home, a unique element that reveals different aspects of itself every time you look at it. There is nothing like the warmth of wood especially when it is something that was created just for you.