How Moisture Affects Wood Floors Part 2

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Proper installation of wood floors requires a certain time for acclimation of the product prior to installation. It means that the wood needs to be stored inside the home under living conditions until it is in equilibrium with its surroundings. What does it mean? It means that the wood no longer gains or loses moisture. It is in balance with the home conditions, if you will. Let’s say that Avi’s Hardwood Floors is delivering solid white oak floors to Berkeley, CA. The white oak floor usually comes at around 7% moisture content. We know this from years of testing wood floors with our moisture meters. We also know that the average sub floors in the Bay Area range at 9%-12% in most places. That means that a wood floors needs to gain moisture before they are installed. An average oak floor in our area gains about one percentage point a week, so the white oak floors would need to be acclimated for about two to three weeks in total. What happens if you don’t acclimate your wood floor? The floor will gain that moisture after the installation and at that time, it has nowhere to go but up. That is when you see hardwood floors cup and buckle. How in the world do you add so many weeks to your remodeling project just for the floor and without delaying other trades at work? Avi’s Hardwood Floors has the answer.

  • We typically deliver the floor to the home a week or two before the installation and store it out of the way. For example, along a wall or behind a big couch. That way you can still maintain your life without interruption.
  • We recommend acclimating the floor to the house after it is installed and before it is sanded and finished. We coordinate with other trades like painters to come in during that acclimation time to finish up their work. This way the owner doesn’t “lose” precious time just waiting for the floor to acclimate with no other work taking place. 

By the time we get to finish the floors, they already reached the moisture content required. Acclimation is subjective to each home, each wood specie and each installation application. A home without air conditioning up in the Berkeley Hills has different conditions than a home in Lafayette. A red oak floor 3/4” thick will require different acclimation time than a solid Brazilian Cherry floor. A glue down of engineered wood floor will require different acclimation than a wood floor to be nailed down onto the second floor of the home.

In the end it is up to the wood flooring expert to determine the schedule of acclimation. Ensuring a successful installation is a must. If things go wrong and they do, the consequences are dire and expensive. In a failed floor installation like buckling, the floor needs to be replaced. That means additional costs:

  1. Moving out of your home
  2. Moving the furniture
  3. Removing trim and floors
  4. Identifying and fixing the moisture source
  5. New floors
  6. New trim
  7. Moving furniture back 

This is nothing compared to the trouble in time and mental energy wasted with having to deal with what happened, who would take responsibility for it and doing it all over again. When hiring a wood floor professional care to weigh your options carefully. Paying a qualified professional more money now is better than paying them a LOT more money later to fix a problem. 

Why Hire Avi’s Hardwood Floors for All Your Hardwood Flooring Needs

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It is not that complicated. We all have busy lives with no time to spare. The last thing we need in our home where we care for our families is a remodel project gone wrong. A hardwood flooring project is probably the most intruding to some people because they have to vacate the house form furniture, themselves and their loved ones. Sometimes for a few days and sometimes for a week. Here, at Avi’s Hardwood Floors we take the time to plan out your project and help you cover all bases so you can get back to your life with minimum interruption. Where are the pitfalls along the way? What should we look for when hiring a contractor? If we need to hire a floor contractor we want to make sure that he or she meet the following criteria:

  • Licensed in the state of California
  • Bonded and insured
  • Has workers comp insurance for their employees
  • Has great reviews, a website and is able to provide references
  • Years of experience
  • Trade education and technical training certificates
  • Trade references (not just consumers)
  • Reliable
  • Provide quality work
  • On time
  • Trust worthy, meaning you can give them a key to your house and leave town for the duration of the project
  • Fair prices
  • No hidden costs
  • Honest

By covering all points mentioned above you can insure the success of your project. At Avi’s Hardwood Floor we serve the counties of Contra Costa and Alameda. We also serve other areas based on distance from our location. We will show up on time, meet the deadline, provide you with a quality service and product and have no hidden costs once started the work. 

How moisture affects your hardwood floors Part 1

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Floor glued down to a concrete slab. Knowing that we applied epoxy moisture barrier first ensured our client a piece of mind. This floor will last a life time. Hardwood floors are a living product. They move when relative humidity changes, they change color over time and they present more character as time goes by. Hardwood floors is the top choice when it comes to floors. No matter where you go in the Bay Area, California you will find wood floors in almost every home. It is in homes in Pinole, El Cerrito, Berkeley, Albany, Orinda, Lafayette and the list goes on. The wood floors vary from red oak to white oak in most cases. Some are maple, walnut and hickory. Some wood floors are top nailed and some are tongue and groove thicker floors. The one thing that is common to all homes is the presence of moisture. It doesn’t matter if you live closer to the bay, or farther out into the Walnut Creek and Clayton areas. Moisture affects wood floors every day. It can get inside your home in many different ways. The most common ways moisture affects your hardwood floors are:

  • Air
  • Ground below in the crawl space
  • Concrete slab
  • Water leaks

We have all seen our wood floors exhibit movement between summer and winter. Lately with the drought in California; floors, sub floors and wood material in homes have shrunk more than the usual. As a wood flooring contractor I’ve been called many times to fix buckled and cupped floors. As a wood flooring inspector I have seen too many installation related failures as a result of excess moisture. The moisture from below like the soil in your crawl space and the concrete slab is there at all times. During the rainy season that moisture level is elevated. You don’t need to see water to determine a moisture problem. Wood flooring professionals measure moisture and relative humidity in different ways. Most tests are being done with moisture meters and relative humidity test kits. When hardwood floors are installed they must be acclimated first. Acclimation has nothing to do with time. It can last as long as weeks or as little as days. Wood floors are kiln dried to an average of 6%-9% moisture content. Our conditions in the Bay Area average between 9%-12%. Usually wood floors will need to gain moisture and expand before they are installed. When the floors are in nested bundles acclimating inside the house, it is easy for each board to move. If the floors are installed and then have to gain moisture and expand the result is cupping. Cupping will usually occur when there is a moisture imbalance in each board. When a floor board has no place to expand sideways, it is pushed upwards. That is why the edges are higher in each board and it looks like cupping. So, it is crucial that the wood floors are acclimated before installation. Every home is different. Some home owners have heat only, some have heat and air conditioning, some like it cold, some hot, some open the windows all day and some don’t. That is why professionals use moisture meters to determine the time needed for the wood to acclimate. Once acclimated the floors can be installed.

It is important to understand that the acclimation process is different for each wood specie and for each different product. For example, a 3/4” x 7” wide solid white oak floor would need different acclimation than a 1/2” x 3” engineered floor. It is up to the flooring professional to determine the appropriate acclimation time.

In most homes with crawl space the soil is damp year round. Some homes even get standing water during the winter months. A common solution to this problem is covering the soil with a moisture barrier. In other cases a sump pump is installed to remove the water from underneath the house, or I should say from underneath the wood floors. All that dampness and vapor go up into the sub floor and then into the wood floors. That is when the floors start to cup. I’ve heard many stories from home owners who had their wood floors installed during the summer, but it only until winter came that their wood floors started cupping (not floors that we installed, just to be clear).

Ensuring moisture barriers are in place is part of the job. It costs more money upfront but the alternative, which is a floor replacement costs a lot more. Nobody likes spending the holiday season dealing with a construction problem in their home like a failing wood floor.

Common Questions About Hardwood Floors

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  1. Hardwood Floor RefinishHow long will the finish on my wood floors last?This is probably the most asked question when it comes to wood floors. Most urethane finishes would last you years to come. The question is how many years. If you hired a professional to do your floors, they used a commercial grade finish and applied the correct amount of coats on your hardwood floor. Nobody wants to pay for a refinish service, move out of the house and then have to do it all over again after three years. I did see this happen before. Usually when someone applied very thin coats of finish and used a cheap product. In most cases, with proper wood floor maintenance a floor finish should last anywhere between five and ten years. That is not to say that it would look as new after years. Finish gradually loses sheen and using the wood floors gradually wears the resin off the floor. I recommend that before you lose too much finish call a professional to apply one more coat of urethane on your hardwood floors.
  2. What is the best hardwood floor? We often get calls from home owners who have busy lives. They have families, pets, work and they don’t have much time to maintain their wood floors. Some of them want the hardest wood floor or the hardest finish. Some want wood floors that never scratch or dent. There is no such thing. With the explosion of exotic and composite products into the flooring market, consumers have started questioning the durability of our domestic products like Oak and Maple floors. Consumers were now familiar with the Janka Hardness scale, which is there to give you a reference as to how hard and dense a wood is. Numbers from a lab test are great for reference but when you drop a pot on your wood floors, it doesn’t matter if it white oak or Brazilian cherry – the two would dent. If your child drags a chair or a toy across the floor, the wood would scratch no matter what finish you have on the hardwood. Most importantly one needs to understand that it is the combination of wood type and floor finish that makes a good product. Top this with proper maintenance and you have the best wood floor. For example, having a really hard wood like Ipe’ is great, but if your contractor applied two coats of cheap urethane over it then your floor would look pretty bad and worn out in no time.

     

  3. How much should I pay for new hardwood floors?We all know that we want the most for the least amount of money. We also know that you get what you pay for. Interviewing several reputable licensed contractors can help you understand the scope of work. The right professionals can shed light on what they do to assure a successful installation. The most common problem people have with wood floors is cupping. A new floors is put in, the home owners move in and shortly after the floor is cupped. Now that the entire family is moved in, including furniture the solution is a big head ach. In our trade we say that there is never time to do thing right in the first place, but there is always time to do it again. Fixing a wood floor costs five times more than doing right the first time. So how much should you pay? In the Bay Area, California expect the prices per square foot to be a minimum of $4 for refinish and a minimum of $5 for installation services.

Ten Tips for Choosing New Hardwood Floors

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HardwoodFloorIstallation_BeforeAfterAlmost every home in the Bay Area, California from the Berkeley Hills to Walnut Creek have hardwood floors. Once perceived as the expensive alternative to carpets and linoleum, is no longer expensive. Scientific data now shows that money is no longer the only consideration for choosing wood floors. Factors like health and effects on our environment play a big role in consumers decision making. Hardwood floors have become the go to floors. They are beautiful, renewable, easy to maintain and more affordable than ever. Here are the best tips for how to choose a hardwood floor for you home:

  1. Not toxic – unlike other floor coverings such as carpets and linoleum, wood floors are not made of synthetics and chemicals. The tree is cut and milled into wood flooring planks. Then in most cases the floor is finished in your house by a professional. Carpets and other floor coverings hide a lot of pollutants underneath them. A lot of people especially young children will develop some sort of health conditions living with those floor coverings over their life time. See this article from the American Lung Association http://www.lung.org/healthy-air/home/resources/carpets.html
  2. Easy to clean – hardwood floors need vacuuming, sweeping or mopping periodically. That is it. Once clean they hold no pollutants in them. Nobody likes hiring and paying professionals to come in and clean their floors. Unlike carpets which need constant shampooing wood floors are easy to maintain.
  3. This 80 year old floor was repaired and refinished by Avi's Hardwood FloorsNot expensive – years ago wood floors were considered a high end choice and very expensive. With today’s growing demand hardwood floors had become the number one growing floor choice by home owners. Whether bamboo floors or exotic Brazilian cherry, wood floors are no longer just for the wealthy.
  4. Durability – nothing compares to the durability of wood floors. Carpets will stain, smell and look just plain bad after a short period of time, especially if you have a busy life with kids and pets in the house. Wood floors are more forgiving, maintain their look much longer and can be refinished multiple times.
  5. Longevity – hardwood floors which were installed a hundred years ago are still being sanded and repairs to date. Carpets and other man made floor coverings never last that long. Nobody wants to spend a lot of money every few years on a new floor. That is why wood is the best choice.
  6. Trends – wood floors never went out of style. Designers and architects still specify wood floors as the go to floor. You can change the look of wood floors by changing the stain color after a while and keep up with the trends in the market.
  7. Easy to repair – if you have damages in your wood floors or need to add on a small section it is easy as easy can get. Many old wood floors have been refinished and repairs to revive their looks. Other floor coverings would have had to be torn up and replaced.
  8. Smart investment – any realtor will tell you that a home with wood floors is worth a lot more than a home without. If you installed hardwood floors at your home and years later wanted to sell it, you are most likely to get your money back and still make a profit on top of that. Homes with wood floors sell faster and receive many more offers.
  9. Better for our planet – we were all taught that cutting trees is wrong. Well, not quite true. With engineers controlling the forest harvesting, we now have more trees in our forests than ever before. The United States is not clear cutting forests and we are now able to manage them instead of eliminating them. With programs for planting trees and protecting wild life we manage to use wood, our most valuable resource of all with the least impact on our environment.
  10. Nothing makes a home more welcoming and warm than wood floors. With just a simple layout or an intricate parquet with inlays and medallions, wood floors make every house a special home to you and your family. 

How long will the finish last on my hardwood floors?

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Hardwood FloorPaying a professional to refinish your hardwood floors could be a small fortune. A lot of consumers are concerned with one question: how long before I need to pay again to refinish my wood floors? Or in other words, how long will my finish last?

How long is determined by a lot of variables:

  1. What type of wood you have and what type of finish was applied

If you have oak floors with polyurethane finish you’re most likely to have a long lasting finish. If you have very soft wood with only two coats of a one part water base finish (designed for low traffic residential use) the finish would not last as long.

  1. How long did you let your finish cure before occupying the home

Most people want to move into their home as soon as the finish is dry on their wood floors. That is a big mistake. The finish needs time (a good week or two) before it cures. Curing means that the finish is pretty much done off gassing and it is hard all the way through.

  1. Did your wood flooring contractor apply the finish correctly

The finish would behave as good as how it was applied. Meaning, your contractor applied the finish to the floor using the right applicator and right spread rate. Some guys like applying the finish really thin and that means less resin is left on the floor to protect it.

  1. How big is your family

Are you a single mom with three kids or two parents with no kids? Do you have dogs? Is so, are they small or big? The more people and pets walk on the floor and use it, the more wear and tear the floor finish will show.

  1. What is your life style

Do you let people wear shoes inside your house? Do you clean once a week? A month? Two months? Are you a crazy cook like me? Drips and drops all over the kitchen floor? Do you have a lot of parties at your place with women walking with high hill shoes?

As you can see everything counts and adds up. Everyone is different so it is best to hire the best pro you can find and let them provide you with the product that matches you and your needs.

Pros and cons of dark and gray wood floors

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Turning this cherry wood into gray. The painter will later turn the risers and rail into white.

In recent years the hardwood flooring market had been shifting towards darker wood floors. From the medium brown hardwood floors all the way to gray and black. It seems every job we’ve taken on lately calls for a dark walnut stain or gray stain. The design world has really affected our industry. The homes these days are dominated by white and gray paint on walls and cabinetry with dark floors. 

So with change in color comes a change in look and practical use. Here are the pros for dark and gray wood floors:

  • These floors look more modern and contemporary. When most of us look at a honey color wood floor we think of the 70’s floors when everything was finished with a clear urethane. Most homes in our area such as Berkeley, Oakland, Albany and Piedmont have oak floors. We had been refinishing them from a clear honey color to a dark walnut stain on almost every job.
  • If you’re selling your home that is what buyers are looking for these days. Realtors are calling for white light paint on walls and cabinets and dark stained wood floors. This seems to be making a quicker sale coming with a higher price tag.
  • It is much easier fitting modern new furniture with these floors since the furniture industry also turned into colors of the same design group. New furniture come in wire brushed finish, different shades of gray and white and a more rustic but light color spectrum. Staining the wood floors dark adds to a nice contrast. 

That is pretty much what I think are the pros of dark hardwood floors. Let’s look at what the cons might be:

  • It’s a trend. Much like others it might go away in a year or two. Clear color wood floors might turn into the new trend again. That means you will be stuck with furniture that go very well with your floors.
  • Dark shows everything. Talk to anyone who has a dark hardwood floor and you’ll soon find out that maintenance is a little more involved. Sweeping and vacuuming more regularly is a must. A small price to pay if you love the dark floor.
  • The dark stain color is only pigments on top of a lighter most likely oak floor. Scratching through the color might show a lighter more visible scratch than other floors.
  • Achieving the dark color on wood takes more skill, more labor and in turn more money. You’ll pay a little more to get that dark out of your floors than if you were to ask for a clear coat. 

It depends on your reasons and goals moving forward with your decision making. I don’t think any of the pros or cons are so harsh to drive you away from either option. Wood floors are beautiful and certainly more valuable than any other floor options. Light or dark – I don’t think you can go wrong. 

Should I Use Engineered Wood Floors or Solid Wood Floors?

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Let’s get the definition of these products straight before we discuss them. Why? Because some people refer to laminates as engineered and vice versa. A solid piece of wood floor means it is one piece of wood from top to bottom. An engineered product is made of core material and a top layer of wood veneer. The engineered hardwood floors were made for one reason: to perform in applications solid wood floors could not. Meaning, the construction of the product allows us to:

  • glue it down to concrete slabs
  • float it over any substrate
  • nail it just like solid floors


This engineered floors could only be refinished once. After that, it will need to go to the land field.

This engineered floors could only be refinished once. After that, it will need to go to the land field.

The original engineered wood floors were made of a plywood core and a top veneer layer. The plywood which is made of wood, consists of layers of veneers with each layer perpendicular to the next. With wood movement in mind, the construction of the engineered floors created a product with superior stability. Years ago, we didn’t have the technology and products to glue down solid wood floors to concrete. Now we do. Although, in a very limited product selection it can be done. Nonetheless, solid wood floors cannot be floated under any circumstances. The idea that one product is better than the other is wrong. Each product has its pros and cons. For example, using solid floors means we use more wood to make the product. That means cutting more trees. Making engineered wood floors means we use chemicals, glues and resins in the process. That doesn’t sound like environmentally friendly, right? Solid wood floors can last more than a hundred years. After removal it can be recycled and re used. The life cycle of engineered wood floors is limited to the thickness of the wear layer. When engineered wood floors are removed they go to the land field. They cannot be burnt, recycled and/or re used. 

Let’s take a look at the following table:

 

    Solid wood floors

 

Engineered wood floors

Nail down

Yes

Yes

Float

No

Yes

Glue down

Limited products

Yes

Wear layer

¼” for most floors

From none to 3/16”

Beveled edges

No

most

Pre finished

Yes

Yes

Unfinished

Yes

yes

Price

Varies supply/demand

Varies between manufacturers

Domestic and exotic wood

Yes

yes

Contains adhesives/resins

No

Yes

Off gassing from product itself (not finish)

No

yes

The bottom line is this: whatever product you use, whether engineered or solid make sure it is the right application, environment and use for it. You can buy cheap solid floors or cheap engineered floors. The consequences are very different. With cheap solid floors you might get a bad looking floor. With cheap engineered wood floor you might have a delaminated floor that needs replacement. The topic is complicated and can be argued either way. In the end, it’s all up to you the consumer in deciding what is important to you when it comes to wood floors.

Hardwood Floors For Less

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Bad Sanding

Everyone knows the old saying “you get what you pay for”. Finding cheap hardwood floor services in the East Bay is an easy task. There are many unqualified wood floor contractors out there, both licensed and unlicensed. We are the ones called to fix the wood floors after the fact. We refinished wood floors all around the Bay Area. From Mill Valley to Piedmont and Alamo. It is the same old story every time. A home owner calls me to come look at a wood floor job that someone else messed up. From the time they first guy start working on the floors to the time I get the call to fix it two to three months have gone by. I recall an email from last year: a client who hired someone else to refinish their floors in Kensington emailed me to say that they “should have hired Avi’s Hardwood Floors”. Three months after the guy refinished their floors they were still not back in their home and the floors were so poorly done that they could not be fixed but had to be replaced.

So why is cheap hardwood floors not so cheap? Avi’s Hardwood Floors is what I refer to as “An honest licensed qualified company”. It is very simple: We visit the site, give you a detailed firm bid, stick to our deadlines and do the job right. We might be a little more expensive on some jobs but there is always a good reason for that. On a 1000 square foot job we might be $200 more or let’s say for the sake of argument $3000 more. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that if you hire the wrong person and they do the job poorly you’re looking at wasting weeks and months of your time, not to mention the agony of not having your home back yet. All of a sudden you’re standing there thinking you need to pay a lot more now to fix the job and you already paid a lot to the first guy. We’ve seen it too many times and I am sure we will see it more in the future.

When it comes to cheap wood floor companies there is no going around the fact that it doesn’t matter if you live in the Berkeley Hills, Walnut Creek or San Pablo. Everyone wants to save money. Everyone wants a decent job done on their floors. Sometimes it is better to hire a dustless refinishing company to do less of your floors but do it right, than hire an unqualified person to mess up your entire floor.

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.