Hardwood floors are a great choice to consider when renovating your space. They are a timeless and elegant option that adds value to your home. Solid and engineered hardwood flooring are the two main types of hardwood. Both types are made from wood and look the same once installed – can you tell the if the photo to the left is engineered or solid? But there are some differences between them in how they are manufactured and their features.

Solid Hardwood
As its name suggests, solid hardwood is milled from wood. It can be sanded and finished many times to stay in pristine condition. Solid hardwood is not recommended for rooms where moisture from daily activities or the ground could damage the floor. This includes kitchens, bathrooms, and any areas below grade such as basements. Homeowners should be prepared for solid flooring to expand and contract as moisture changes in each season.

Engineered Hardwood
Each plank of engineered hardwood is made up of multiple sheets of either hardwood, fibreboard or plywood laminated together with a final layer of hardwood on top. Each layer is put on top of each other in the opposite direction to create a dimensionally stable floor. Using this method called “cross-ply construction” creates a dimensionally stable floor that withstands changes in moisture better than solid hardwood. It is suited to kitchens, bathrooms, or basements. Engineered floors can even be sanded and refinished.

In addition to your budget and personal preference, consider the rooms you will be installing hardwood in before making your flooring decision. The research is worth it when the end result is a beautiful hardwood floor for generations to come.

We’re excited to say that we now carry cork and vinyl floors from Cork Art! With the new display in our showroom, we’ve been asked a lot of questions about this lesser known flooring option. Here’s 5 main reasons why you’ll love cork floors in your home:

1. Comfortable
Cork Art floors have forty million cells per cubic centimetre that are filled with air. These cells allow the floor to reduce the conduction of temperature and sound. Your cork floors will stay warm and comfortable underfoot and reduce noise.

2. Healthy
If you love the warmth of carpet but suffer from allergies, cork floors are a great solution as they are safe for asthma/allergy sufferers. It’s anti microbial and resists mold and mildew. One of the substances cork is composed of, suberin, is a natural insect repeller that keeps bugs and termites away.

3. Easy to install
While most cork floors are known to be easy to install, the patented Uniclic system of Cork Art floors makes it even simpler.

4. Resistant and durable
Cork is known for being very resistant to wear. Its flexible nature means cork is less affected by impact and friction than other similar surfaces are.

5. Sustainable
When cork is harvested, the trees are not cut down. Instead they are stripped. This process doesn’t harm the tree and allows it to continue renewing itself naturally. Cork oak forests will continue to flourish even as the popularity of this amazing floor continues to grow.

“Have you ever been to Safeway?”

Chances are, you’ve seen and walked on luxury vinyl flooring more often than you’d know. This resilient flooring is used in a variety of commercial settings such as your local grocery store, florist, or coffee shop. Photos from one of our suppliers, Karndean, show an example of settings you can see luxury vinyl flooring in. Homeowners looking for a more durable flooring option are choosing to install it in their homes.

There’s a lot of baggage that comes with the word vinyl. The mere mention of the word often brings up images of tacky colours and a surface that discolours before it wears out. But vinyl isn’t like that anymore. Today’s luxury vinyl flooring is designed to replicate the look and feel of associated products such as hardwood or tile but without the drawbacks of each. Luxury vinyl flooring comes in two forms, long rectangular planks or square tiles. Its often referred to as luxury vinyl plank or luxury vinyl tile.

Benefits of luxury vinyl flooring include:

Durability: LVT is scratch resistant and doesn’t crack.

Quiet and warm: It’s quiet, warm, and comfortable underfoot.

Low maintenance: No varnishing, sealing, or waxing is required. LVT looks great with minimal cleaning effort.

Moisture resistance: Spills can be removed easily without damaging the floor.

Realism: Products that look impossible to tell apart from the surface imitated. Printing technologies even allow our suppliers to create tiles with actual tactile texture.

Luxury vinyl tile adds the beauty of hardwood or tile but with more performance. It’s the perfect solution for areas with high traffic, kids, dogs or high moisture. Style does not have to be sacrificed to get durable flooring.

Flooring samples allow you to envision how the colour and texture will look in your space. Without seeing the whole picture, it’s often challenging to imagine how the sample will look with preexisting paint, window coverings, or furniture. We encourage customers to take the sample into the space where the flooring will be installed.

 
Keeping the sample for 24 hours allows you to view how the flooring will look in both natural and artificial light. By viewing the samples in as many situations as possible, you’ll be prepared when you see the installed floor

A couple notes about samples:

• Variations between samples and installed flooring may exist. Samples are designed to represent the colour and texture of the flooring. Each piece is unique within its own dye lot and may vary slightly from the sample.
• Samples are not necessarily stain resistant. It’s tempting to throw a glass of red wine on a carpet sample to see how well it will resist the stain, but these are experiments are highly discouraged. Not all samples will have stain resistance built into them like the installed carpet will.
• Treat samples with respect. Future customers deserve to view the samples in the same pristine condition you received them in.
• Feel free to ask to keep the sample for an extended period of time. We’d rather you take the time to test it out now, then be unhappy later because your new floor doesn’t look right with your sofa.