Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Protecting your wood floors from extra soles this holiday!

As you prepare your home for holiday guests this week, don't forget to give your wood floors some extra care and attention. The added foot traffic of friends and family during the holidays means extra wear and tear on your floors. The following tips can help you make sure your wood floors are properly protected as you welcome guests into your home:

If you have wood floors in your kitchen, be sure to protect areas near the refrigerator, sink, dishwasher and stove with area rugs to avoid water and food stains.

Place rugs or floor mats near any entrance into your home so guests can wipe their feet and keep any harsh materials from making their way onto your wood floors. You may also want to asks guests to remove their shoes when entering your home.

If you need to move furniture to make room for extra guests, be sure to use felt pads on table and chair legs to avoid scratching your wood floors.

If you have wood flooring in areas of your home that you anticipate seeing high traffic, you may want to use area rugs in those rooms as well.


These tips can help ensure that your wood floors maintain their finish and shine, even under the added holiday foot traffic. Taking these few extra steps to protect your floors can also help ensure that you can enjoy your holidays with family and friends without worrying about the safety of your floors.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Giving Thanks

As we take this week to think about all we're thankful for, we here at Real Wood Floors wanted to take the opportunity to say thanks to all of you for your support in 2010. We know that you have a choice for your engineered flooring needs and we're thankful that you choose our product.

We will continue to offer you the best products at a competitive rate as well as the "service after the sale" as we move forward through the end of 2010 and into 2011. Additionally, we hope you won't hesitate to let us know if there is something we can do to make your experience using our products even better.

Enjoy the holiday week and thanks for giving us the opportunity to serve you.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Should I paint or stain my trim?

I have been asked recently by a couple of clients what to do about their wall trim after they install their flooring. Should you paint trim to set it apart from the floor or should you buy the same type of wood that is used on the floor and stain it?

In my humble opinion, I think painting the base molding really helps to make the floor stand on its own. In other words, when you stain base shoe, quarter round or base molding to match the wood floor it tends to make the floor look like its crawling up the wall. Add to this that it is a good possibility that it will be very difficult to get an exact match on staining trim work and I think it makes the case for painting even better. It's a situation where just getting close on the color looks worse than being completely different. Look at these pictures below and decide for yourself.

Above: Stained shoe molding makes the flooring look like its crawling up the wall and doesn't set it apart from the trim.





Above: Painted base shoe and trim distinguishes the floor from the wall.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Wear layers and longevity

We talk a lot about the thickness of the wear layer on our products. The wear layer is the usable surface on an engineered floor, the layer of hardwood that sits on top that gives the floor its unique appearance which is exactly the same as a solid 3/4" floor. But it also represents the potential lifespan of the floor based on its thickness. Traditional solid 3/4" wood flooring is thought to be the gold standard of real wood flooring. And in many ways they still represent a viable option. They have a thick wear layer that can be re-used and they will look great in your home for a lifetime. Our engineered product mimics these benefits by giving you a heavy 5mm wear layer that can be re-sanded over time to refresh your floor and in addition give you added benefits like better dimensional stability which limits the seasonal shrinkage you typically see in solid floors. They can also be used in basements unlike solid wood flooring and also in glue-down applications they will eliminate the need for large unsightly transitions from wood to tile or carpet.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

What is a quality wood floor?

I see a number of forum posts asking the above question. What is quality, how can it be defined? Here is a brief overview of the different aspects of picking out a quality wood flooring product.

Raw Materials
This can be difficult to ascertain but it is important to note that quality products start with quality raw materials. In engineered flooring this pertains to the backing material (plywood for multiply products and wood fillets and backing veneers for 3ply products), the actual hardwood veneer, and the glues used to process the product into a piece of usable flooring.

Processing
How are the floors made? What type of equipment are they processed on? Flooring produced on high-end German machinery are more likely to have tight fitting tolerances and less over-wood (height differences) than product made on lower end machinery. Not to mention contractors will have less difficulty installing products that are easy to work with. That translates to less time they are working in your home.

Investment Value
Is the floor you are purchasing made in such a way that it can be expected to last a long time in your home? This pertains mostly to the thickness of the wear-layer on an engineered floor. Is there enough usable hardwood to be refinished multiple times so that a few years down the road you can have them re-sanded and finished rather than paying for removal and replacement of new flooring?

There are other considerations but these are a few key items to explore when choosing a floor for your home.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Production Availability for Real Wood Floors

I wanted to give you some updates regarding our upcoming production so you can plan your bids accordingly. We have picked up a number of new customers in the last 4-6 weeks and it has put a little lag into some of our available inventory for certain items and we are now in catch-up mode. I wanted to take each species and break down our current inventory situation and our upcoming production so you know what to expect for the next 6-8 weeks.

Red Oak
Still the king of everything we do. We are having a difficult time keeping up on 2 1/4" and 3 1/4" in both Select and #1 common. We have 2 1/4" and 3 1/4" S&B in stock currently and we have a lot of 4" that we ran to sell as a substitute until we get the 3 1/4" production up to a level that will meet the current demand. If you have larger jobs upcoming you might consider pushing 4" widths for both S&B and #1. We had backed way off on 5" production last year as our demand for that product had slacked off, but with the rising solid market pricing our demand is coming back. We have stock on it currently and we have more on the way. If you have upcoming demand for 2 1/4" you might get orders placed early as we are now getting distributors buying some material for stock.

White Oak
We started making plainsawn white oak about 18 months ago and I don't think we've ever caught up on 3 1/4" S&B. It is a tough product in that the demand for the common grade is not as strong as the red oak and that forces us to find very specific loads of lumber that has good color and the right widths to make just what we need. We have been doing better as of late with it but it is still a situation where every time we get a batch in it is usually presold before it hits the warehouse. We have found a solution on the lumber side to this problem but it will still take a few months to get that worked out. So on 3 1/4" S&B be prepared for some delays. We do have about 8000sqft coming in soon but we do have some orders against it already. 4" S&B has a new life in that we've taken a lot of new orders from new customers on it and similarly to the 4" we are catching up. 5" S&B we do the best on and we do have a little in stock now and we have another 10000sqft in production. We have not found any good market for the #1 common product yet, please let us know if you have different ideas for that. We are going to move some white oak into our prefinished handscraped product to off-load that material.

Maple
This product more than any other has seen an increased demand in the last few weeks. We sold out of 3 1/4" in both grades and we have a little more coming in but its going to be a month or so before we can catch up on that width. In response we've upped the 4" production so please consider quoting the 4" product for the short term as an alternative to the 3 1/4". We have good stock of 5" currently and we have more coming in.

Jatoba
We have all widths on hand now. We will have more 5" coming in the third week of March (8000sqft).

Hickory
We have sold a large volume of hickory to distributors who are finding their solid pricing inching up and are seeing the engineered product as a more viable option than 6 months ago. We sold completely out of 4" and 5" last week. We still have 3 1/4" and 6" on the ground and we will have 10000sqft of 5" and 3500sqft of 4" coming in around the third week of March.

R&Q White Oak
This has been a product in the past that was tough to keep up on but we are currently well stocked on all widths and grades.

Walnut
We currently have good stock of both grades in all widths. We are offering special pricing on 4" Character so you might consider that when you have customers looking for Character Walnut floors.

Tigerwood
We have a good amount of 5" material on hand.

Santos Mahogany
We have a good amount of 5" material on hand.


Let us know if there is anything we can do or if you have any questions about our upcoming production.